Design and Control of a Deformable Trees-Pruning Aerial Robot

Tree branches near the electric power transmission lines are of great threat to the electricity supply. Nowadays, the tasks of clearing threatening tree branches are still mostly operated by hand and simple tools. Traditional structures of the multirotor aerial robot have the problem of fixed struct...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Changliang Xu, Zhong Yang, Zhao Zhang, Hao Xu, Jiying Wu, Dongsheng Zhou, Luwei Liao, Qiuyan Zhang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2020-01-01
Series:Complexity
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2020/6627339
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Tree branches near the electric power transmission lines are of great threat to the electricity supply. Nowadays, the tasks of clearing threatening tree branches are still mostly operated by hand and simple tools. Traditional structures of the multirotor aerial robot have the problem of fixed structure and limited performance, which affects the stability and efficiency of pruning operation. In this article, in order to obtain better environmental adaptability, an active deformable trees-pruning aerial robot is presented. The deformation of the aerial robot is implemented through two ways, arm telescopic and folding. In order to suppress the influence of internal and external disturbances on the system, Active Disturbance Rejection Control (ADRC) technology is adopted to build the flight controller. Firstly, active deformation aerial robot structure is given, followed by system dynamic model establishment under wind disturbance using the Newton–Euler method. Also, the analysis of the gusts influence on the system is considered. Then, the active deformation aerial robot system is decoupled into a combination of six SISO systems, so that a disturbance rejection controller is designed. Finally, the expanded state observer and the nonlinear state error feedback law are used to inspect and compensate the disturbance. Simulation results of attitude and position tracking as well as the antidisturbance capability show that the active deformation aerial robot with the ADRC flight controller designed in this paper has excellent attitude control capabilities during flight and trees-pruning operation.
ISSN:1076-2787
1099-0526