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Modeling and Performance Assessment
of the HyTAQ, a Hybrid Terrestrial/Aerial Quadrotor
Arash Kalantari and Matthew Spenko
AbstractThis paper analytically and experimentally evaluates the per-
formance of the hybrid terrestrial and aerial quadrotor (HyTAQ) robot.
The HyTAQ is composed of a quadrotor hinged at the center of a cylindri-
cal cage. This configuration gives the robot an increased range compared
with aerial-only quadrotors and negates any obstacle avoidance issues that
are commonly associated with terrestrial-only robots. An accurate dynam-
ical model of the robot is derived, which helps with an in-depth analysis
of the systems energy consumption. The analysis quantifies the energy
savings during terrestrial locomotion as compared with aerial locomotion.
Experimental results validate the analysis and indicate that, depending on
the surface, the robots terrestrial range can be 11 times greater and op-
erational time ten times greater than the aerial range/operation time at
equivalent speeds.
Index TermsEnergy efficiency, MAV, multimodal locomotion, robot.
I. INTRODUCTION
This paper presents an analysis of the hybrid terrestrial and aerial
quadrotor (HyTAQ) robot, HyTAQ, first introduced in [6] (see Fig. 1).
The robot consists of a quadrotor hinged inside a cage, which allows the
cage to rotate freely with respect to the quadrotor and makes terrestrial
locomotion possible using the same actuator set and control system
used in flight. This design removes the need for complex transmissions,
additional actuators, and their associated electronics. Compared with an
Manuscript received February 14, 2014; accepted July 7, 2014. Date of pub-
lication July 30, 2014; date of current version September 30, 2014. This paper
was recommended for publication by Associate Editor T. Hamel and Editor B. J.
Nelson upon evaluation of the reviewers comments. This work was supported
by the Office of Naval Research under Award N00014-10-1-0769.
The authors are with the Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering
Department, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL 60616-3793 USA
(e-mail: akalanta@iit.edu; mspenko@iit.edu).
This paper has supplementary downloadable material available at
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org, provided by the author. The material consists of a
video, which demonstrates the performance of HyTAQ robot during both aerial
and terrestrial locomotion. The robot is composed of a cylindrical cage con-
nected to a quadrotor through two revolute joints. Thus, the cage can roll freely
with respect to the quadrotor body. The video shows how terrestrial locomotion
is successfully achieved over different terrain types in indoor and outdoor en-
vironments, even when wind gusts prohibit successful aerial locomotion. It can
also be seen how the robots aerial locomotion capabilities make negotiating
obstacles extremely easythe robot simply flies over them. The file is in MP4
format which can be viewed with most media players including Windows Media
Player. The size of video is 26.7 MB. Contact A. Kalantari (akalanta@iit.edu)
or M. Spenko (mspenko@iit.edu) for any questions.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2014.2337555
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS, VOL. 30, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2014 1279

Fig. 2. Reference frames used for deriving the equations of motion when the
Fig. 1. Hybrid terrestrial and aerial quadrotor. robot is in flight. I is the inertial frame with i3 pointing in the direction opposite
from the gravity vector. B is a body-fixed coordinate frame with b 3 pointing
normal to the quadrotors plane of propellers.

aerial-only rotorcraft, the terrestrial locomotion mode provides a vastly

increased range and operation time by eliminating the need to hover.
battery. An optical encoder provides velocity feedback for controlling
Compared with a terrestrial-only mobile robot, the obstacle negotiation
the rolling speed. The cage is fabricated out of polycarbonate joined
problem is meaningless for the HyTAQ. The robot simply flies over
by carbon fiber strips to help make it crash resistant, similar to other
obstacles.
robots [7].
Only a few papers detail the design of hybrid terrestrial and aerial
An Arduino-based Arducoper APM2.5 controls the robot. Operator
robots, most of which are separate aerial and terrestrial mechanisms
control commands are transmitted via radio transmitter, and an Xbee
attached together. The morphing micro airland vehicle is a fixed-
transmits on-board sensor data to an operator station. The robot is also
wing system attached to a wheel-leg structure and its terrestrial and
equipped with an on-board Muvi Veho micro video camera.
aerial locomotion mechanisms are driven by separate actuators [1].
DASH + Wings [11] uses wings to help the terrestrial DASH run and
climb ramps. Another bioinspired hybrid robot exhibits both dynamic III. DYNAMICS MODEL
climbing and gliding [4]. Finally, the design of a flying robot that uses The equations of motion are derived here and will be used in
wings to both walk and fly is presented in [3]. However, this robot is Section IV to analyze the HyTAQs performance.
not able to directly transition between aerial and terrestrial modes of
locomotion.
A. Aerial Mode
Another noteworthy system is a collision-resilient flying robot [2].
The robot is not capable of two modes of locomotion, but is morpho- The HyTAQ behaves as a regular quadrotor during flight. The ad-
logically similar to the HyTAQ in that it surrounds an aerial system dition of cage only changes the mass and moments of inertia. The
with a cage, in this case to reduce disturbances upon collision with dynamics of such systems have been derived elsewhere [9] and are
external obstacles. only summarized here.
In previous work [6], we developed a dynamic model of the Hy- 1) Inertial Dynamics: Using the reference frames shown in Fig. 2,
TAQ and compared the results with the experimental data. The results the HyTAQs equations of motion are given as
indicated that the HyTAQs terrestrial range was almost six times
I B
greater than its aerial range. However, while the model showed quali-
3 ud r
rB = mB g + uf b
mB I (1)
tatively similar results, it did not quantitatively match the experimental ||I r B ||
results. We claimed that this was a result of not running the experi-
u
ments at the robots optimal pitch angle and velocity. While this did
IB I B

B = u I B IB I B
B (2)
prove to be true, the original model did not adequately capture the rel-
u
evant system dynamics. In this paper, we improve the robots dynamic
model and provide a new set of detailed experiments that accurately
where mB is the robots mass; IB B is the quadrotors moment of inertia
demonstrate the HyTAQs abilities. 3 axis; rB is
about its center of mass B , along the b 1 , b
2 , and b
This paper is organized as follows. The experimental platform is
the position vector from a fixed point in the inertial frame to B ; g
introduced in the next section, and the equations of motion are derived
is the gravity vector; I B is the inertial-observed rotational velocity
in Section III. In Section IV, an analysis of the robots power consump- 3 axis; , , and are
of frame B; uf is the net force along the b
tion is performed, and optimal inputs to maximize the robots range
the Euler angles specifying the robots orientation; and u , u , and u
are derived. Experimental results are presented in Section V. Finally,
are the moments induced by the propellers about the b 1 , b
2 , and b
3
Section VI discusses the results and offers solutions to improve the
robots performance. axes, respectively. Note that mB and IB B have different values for the
quadrotor with and without a cage.
II. HARDWARE 2) Aerodynamic Effects: The magnitude of the drag force, ud , ap-
plied to the robot in the direction of flight is defined as
Details about the HyTAQs structure can be found in [6] and, thus,
are only summarized here. The robot uses four 75-W BLDC actuators, 1
5-in 3-in three-bladed propellers, and a 1350-mAh lithium polymer ud = Cd Af va2 (3)
2
1280 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS, VOL. 30, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2014

where is the air density, Cd is the drag coefficient, va is the relative

airstream velocity, and Af is the robots frontal area. We assume the
drag coefficient to be equal to that of a cube (Cd = 1) and that the
frontal area is given as
Af = af cos() + at sin() (4)
where is pitch angle, and af and at are the quadrotors front and top
cross-sectional areas, respectively.
During flight at high translational speeds, propeller flapping and
thrust variation will impact motion [5], [8], [10]. The difference in the
speed of the advancing and retreating blades of a propeller relative to the
freestream generates a difference in each blades thrust and introduces
a moment about the rotor axis, Md , such that
M d = kb (5)
where is the blades deflection angle, and kb is the blade torsional
stiffness. This moment deflects the propellers and, therefore, tilts the Fig. 3. Coordinate frames for the terrestrial mode. I is the inertial frame, and
thrust vector, resulting in a moment about the robots center of mass B is the body coordinate frame fixed to the quadrotor.
Ml [5] such that
Ml = uf h sin (6)
where h is the distance from rotor plane to the center of gravity. The where mB is the quadrotors mass, mC is the cages mass, and is the
introduced moments affect the values of u and u and, consequently, quadrotors pitch angle with respect to
e1 .
the quadrotors motion in the roll and pitch directions and should be 2) Turning Resistance: The turning resistance opposes the rotation
considered in the dynamical model. of the robot along the yaw axis
During translational flight, the relative velocity of the propeller and
y = w||N||i3 (12)
airstream causes the total thrust, uf , to be different during hover and
forward flight for the same rotational speed of the propellers. The ratio where w is the cage width, and is the cage/terrain coefficient of
of the thrust during hover and flight is given as [5] friction.
uf vh For planar motion, we assume that the robot can be modeled as a
= (7)
uf @ h ove r vi va sin rolling disk. The inertial-observed velocity of the HyTAQs center O
where uf @ h ove r is the propellers thrust during hover, and is the angle is given as
of the rotor plane with respect to the free airstream. The induced air v = xi1 + yi2 + zi3
I O
(13)
velocities during hover vh and translational flight vi are given as [5] where x, y, and z are the coordinates of point O in the inertial frame.
 The velocity of the quadrotors center of mass B is
uf @ h ove r
vh = (8)
8A I
v B = I v O d b
1 (14)
vh2 where d is the distance between B and O.
vi =  . (9)
(va cos)2 + (vi va sin)2 The velocity of the contact point P can be obtained using the velocity
Therefore, (7) and (8) can be used to find the hover thrust uf @ h ove r that of the center point vO :
is required to achieve the real amount of thrust uf during translational e1
I
v P = I v O R (15)
flight.
where is the cages rotational velocity. The inertial-observed velocity
B. Terrestrial Mode of point P , i.e., I v P , can be stated in I as
The reference frames used to derive the terrestrial equations of mo-
i1 + (y R sin())i2 + zi3 .
I
v P = (x Rcos()) (16)
tion are depicted in Fig. 3. I is the inertial frame with i3 pointing
opposite the gravity vector. E is fixed at the cages center with e3 in Assuming pure rolling and no sideslip, the velocity of the contact
the same direction as i3 . C is fixed to the cage with c2 always pointing point should always be equal to zero. This gives the two following
e2 . B is the quadrotor-fixed coordinate frame with b
along 3 normal to nonholonomic constraints:
quadrotor and pointing upward. During terrestrial locomotion, the pro-
pellers thrust rolls the cage on the ground by overcoming the opposing
x Rcos() =0 (17a)
forces due to rolling resistance, turning resistance, and air drag.
y Rsin() = 0. (17b)
1) Rolling Resistance: The rolling resistance torque acting on the
cage, r , is similar to the rolling resistance of tires The systems kinetic energy during rolling is then
2
r = Cr r R||N||b (10) 1
KT = (mC + mB )(x 2 + y 2 ) mb Rd cos()
where Cr r is the rolling resistance coefficient, R is the cages radius, 2
and N is the normal force 1  1
+ I2B + mB d2 2 + I2C 2
N = M g uf cos()i3 2 2
1) C *
M = mB + mC (11) + I + I1B sin2 () + I3B cos2 () 2 (18)
2 3
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS, VOL. 30, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2014 1281

where I1C , I2C , and I3C are the cages moments of inertia about point O
and along the c1 ,
c2 , and
c3 axes, respectively. Note that the second-

order term mb Rd cos() in this equation was ignored in our previous
derivation [6]. Inclusion of this term changes the interpretation of the
effect of the center of mass offset d on the robots motion. If this term is
neglected, the analysis suggests that larger values of d make terrestrial
locomotion more energy consuming [6]. Inclusion of the term indicates
that d only affects the systems minimum speed in terrestrial mode. This
effect was verified experimentally.
The robots potential energy is given as

VT = mB ||g||d[1 cos()]. (19)

The external forces and torques acting on the robot can be summa- Fig. 4. Power-thrust relationship for the HyTAQs propeller (GWS three-
bladed propellers, 127 mm in diameter and 76 mm pitch).
rized as

3 ud
fe = u f b e1 (20)
IV. ENERGY ANALYSIS
e = (u || r ||)
e2 + (u cos() || y ||)
e3 . (21)
This section compares the HyTAQs energy consumption in its two
The air drag in the hybrid system is different from an aerial-only modes. A more accurate analysis is presented here compared with
quadrotor because of the addition of the cage. Although the cage is [6] using the updated dynamic model and including the aerodynamic
designed such that the air can flow through it without much obstruction, effects found in Section III-A2. To begin, the propellers power con-
we estimated the hybrid systems frontal area to be equal to a solid sumption is examined.
cylinder of the same size as the cage. Experimental results, which will
be shown later, show that this is a good approximation. A. Power Consumption
Writing the Lagrange equation for the robot gives The HyTAQ uses three-bladed GWS propellers with a
  127-mm diameter and a 76-mm pitch. The propellers power con-
d L L
= Q q k + 1 a q k + 2 a q k (22) sumption to generated thrust is shown in Fig. 4 for three cases: a single
dt qk qk propeller, four propellers mounted to the quadrotor, and four propellers
mounted to the quadrotor with the cage attached. The air flow through
where 1 and 2 are the Lagrange multipliers, and Qq k is the external
the quadrotor affects the performance of each propeller and lowers the
torque or force corresponding to each element. Solving this for the x
efficiency. Similarly, the addition of the cage causes a slight increase
and y coordinates yields
(less than 10%) in the power consumption.
The propellers performance is modeled as a quadratic
mb d[cos()sin()
Mx 2 sin()sin()
+ cos()cos()]
= uf sin()cos() + 1 (23a) P = a1 f 2 + a2 f + a3 (26)

M y mb d[cos()cos() 2 sin()cos() where a1 , a2 , and a3 are fitted to the data.
+ cos()sin()]
= uf sin()sin() + 2 . (23b)
B. Range
Solving (22) for the rolling coordinate yields Note that the HyTAQs maximum range is highly dependent on its
state, either pitch in aerial mode or pitch and velocity in terrestrial
= || r || 1 Rcos() 2 Rsin().
I2C (24) mode. Given a fixed amount of energy E the robots range D is given
as
Replacing for 1 and 2 from (23) into (24) and deriving the Ev
D= (27)
Lagrange equation for and coordinates yield P
where P is the power, and v is the velocity.
C 1) Aerial Range: Based on (1), to keep the robot airborne at a


I2 + MR [ xcos() + y sin()] + ud R

5 6 constant height and speed, the thrust needs to overcome the robots



= u f Rsin() + m B Rd cos() sin() || r || weight and air resistance (see Fig. 5) such that



) * 

I C + I B sin2 () + I B cos2 ()
3 1 3
(25) uf = (mB ||g||)2 + u2d (28)

+2(I3B I1B ) sin()cos()
= u cos() || y ||

uf cos() = mB ||g||

 
(29)


B 2
(I2 + mB d ) + I3 I1 sin()cos()
B B 2
1

5 6 Cd Af v 2 .


uf sin() = ud =
2
(30)

= u mB d ||g||sin() R cos() .
Note that the thrust during the translational flight is different than dur-
Equations (17) and (25) fully describe the robots dynamics in ter- ing hover, as shown in Section III-A2. Moreover, the moment induced
restrial mode and help in analyzing its performance in the following by the aerodynamic effects during flight, Ml + Md , should be com-
section. pensated to maintain a constant pitch angle . This is done by a slight
1282 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS, VOL. 30, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2014

Fig. 5. Forces acting on a quadrotor during flight at a constant speed.

Fig. 7. Analytically obtained terrestrial to aerial range as a function of speed.

In contrast with the analysis in [6], we have included the moment

required to counteract the moment induced by the center of mass offset.
This moment, u , is required to maintain a constant pitch angle and
can be obtained from (25):
u = mB d||g||sin(). (35)
The two moments are related based on the following equations:
u f = f1 + f2 (36a)
Fig. 6. Notation used to describe the robots geometry.
u = (f1 f2 )L (36b)
difference between the rear and front thrusts. However, due to the al- where f1 and f2 are the front and rear propeller thrusts (see Fig. 6)
most linear shape of the powerthrust curve for each propeller, this required to roll at a constant speed. This is also a different approach
difference does not significantly affect the quadrotors overall power than presented in [6], where the sum of f1 and f2 was assumed to be a
consumption. single force acting on the robots geometric center. Solving (36) for f1
The robots velocity while flying at a constant height is a function and f2 and combining them with (34) and (35) gives
of the pitch angle, which can be obtained by dividing (30) by (29):  
 1 ud + M ||g||Cr r d
f1 = + mB ||g||sin()
2mB ||g||tan() 2 sin() + Crr cos() L
v= . (31)  
Cd Af 1 ud + M ||g||Cr r d
f2 = mB ||g||sin() . (37)
Replacing for v and uf from (31) and (29) into (27) and estimating 2 sin() + Crr cos() L
power from (26) give an equation for robots range as a function of During ground locomotion, changes in both velocity and pitch angle
pitch angle affect the HyTAQs energy consumption such that

Ecos2 () 2mB ||g||tan() Ev
DA =
 . (32) DT = (38)
a1 (f12 + f22 ) + a2 (f1 + f2 ) + 2a3
a1 u2f + a2 uf + a3 Cd Af
where DT represents the terrestrial mode range, and f1 and f2 can be
2) Terrestrial Range: We assume the friction in the ball bearings replaced from (37).
(see Fig. 1) can be neglected. Other aerodynamic effects are also ne- Assuming the rolling cages mass to be 25% of that of the quadrotor,
glected since the robot moves at slower speeds in terrestrial mode the robots terrestrial range is compared with an aerial-only quadrotors
(< 6 m/s). Assuming the case where the robot is rolling along the e1 range (see Fig. 7). This analysis shows that at low speeds, rolling is
axis (see Fig. 6) with constant speed (i.e., x = 0), from (25),
= y = much more efficient compared with flying. For instance, on linoleum
we can write (Cr r = 0.015) at 3 m/s, the robots terrestrial range is more than four
uf Rsin() || r || ud R = 0 (33) times the aerial range. This ratio decreases as surface friction increases,
where uf is the force required for the system to roll at a constant speed. but even on artificial turf (Cr r = 0.09), the ratio is over 3:1. At speeds
Replacing ud and r from (3) and (10) and rearranging yield greater than approximately 8 m/s, flight becomes more efficient.

0.5Cd Af v 2 + M ||g||Cr r C. Maximum Range

uf = . (34)
sin() + Crr cos()
To maximize the range, we used nonlinear programming to these
This demonstrates that the value of the required input force is a function values given the following constraints:
of velocity, v, pitch angle, , mass, M , and surface type. Note that the
max DT (v, )
frontal area term Af is different from that in aerial-only quadrotor due v ,
to the added area of the cage. The frontal areas upper bound, which is '
the value we assume, occurs when the cage is solid and no air passes 0<< 2
subject to (39)
through it. f2 > 0.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS, VOL. 30, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2014
Fig. 8. Pitch angle and velocity that maximize the robots range as a function
of terrain type.
Fig. 9. Quadrotor in the wind tunnel mounted on a force-torque sensor.
The second constraint indicates that the force from the propellers should
always be positive. Fig. 8 shows the robots optimal pitch angle and
velocity as a function of the coefficient of rolling resistance. The re-
sults suggest that as the rolling resistance increases, the pitch angle
should decrease such that the vertical component of the thrust becomes
nonzero. This component helps reduce the normal force on the ground
and, consequently, compensates for a portion of the friction force. In
addition, the analysis indicates that the optimal speed increases as the
terrain gets rougher.
V. EXPERIMENTS
The HyTAQs energy efficiency, operation time, and range were
investigated by operating the robot at constant speeds in both aerial
and terrestrial modes.
A. Aerial Mode
The quadrotor was tested inside the Andrew Fejer unsteady flow
wind tunnel to measure the power consumption during flight as a func-
tion of pitch angle (see Fig. 9). The wind tunnel is a closed circuit,
low-speed facility, driven by an axial-vane fan powered by a 40-HP
Baldor Electronics EM2540T synchronous motor. The wind-tunnel test
section is 0.61 m 0.61 m in cross section and 3.1 m in length. Flow
velocities up to 40 m/s can be reached. Screens, honeycombs, and a
1283
Fig. 10. Experimental data of the quadrotors power consumption during flight
as a function of speed.
Fig. 11. Power consumed while rolling on carpet (C r r = 0.03) at different
speeds for three constant pitch angles. HyTAQ consumes the least amount of
power while rolling at a pitch angle of 90 .
contraction region upstream of the test section yield a turbulence level
of 0.3% at the maximum velocity.
The quadrotor was mounted to a JR3 6-degree-of-freedom force
torque sensor and measurements were taken at 1000 Hz. Thrust and
wind speed were adjusted such that the vertical and horizontal com-
ponents of the propellers force equaled the quadrotors weight and
air drag force, respectively. We measured power consumption from
the power source and assumed that wind speed was representative of
flight speed. The results are shown in Fig. 10 and indicate that hovering
requires about 110 W of power and the quadrotor could not produce
enough thrust to overcome its mass at pitch angles > 30 . At 30 ,
which corresponds to a horizontal speed of 11.30 m/s, the quadrotor
consumes about 160 W. The maximum range can be obtained at a
pitch angle of 24 , meaning that the HyTAQ could fly 3.6 km with a
fully charged battery.
B. Terrestrial Mode
For terrestrial locomotion, experiments were performed on linoleum,
carpet, and artificial turf. The surfaces rolling resistances were mea-
sured by dragging the HyTAQ with a string coupled to a load cell. Pitch
angles of 80 , 85 , and 90 were tested. The velocity ranged between
the robots minimum possible speed on a surface (2.5 m/s for linoleum
and carpet and 2 m/s on artificial turf) up to 6 m/s. We measured speed
using a rotary encoder as shown in Fig. 1. Power consumption is mea-
sured directly from the battery output using voltage and current sensors.
Fig. 11 shows the results for carpet. Note that at a pitch angle of 90 ,
1284 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS, VOL. 30, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2014

Fig. 12. Terrestrial range on carpet (C r r = 0.03) with a 1350 mAh battery
at different speeds and three constant pitch angles. Maximum range of 8.5 km
is achieved at a speed of 3 m/s and pitch angle of 90 .

TABLE I
SUMMARY OF THE EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

Terrain Cr r Optimal Pitch Optimal Speed Max. Range Max.

Angle (m/s) (km) Time
(min)

Flight 24 10.7 3.6 5.5

Linoleum 0.015 90 3 9.0 50
Carpet 0.030 90 3 8.5 47
Turf 0.090 85 4 5.2 22
Fig. 13. Power consumption of the robot during flight and on the ground.
Curves fitted based on the experimental data.

the robot consumes the least amount of power among the three tests
at all tested speeds. The robots range as a function of speed and pitch
angle is also depicted in Fig. 12. The robots maximum range is 8.5 km
(Cr r = 0.03), which is achieved when the robot travels at 3 m/s, and
the pitch angle is maintained at 90 . This is about 2.4 more than the
quadrotors maximum aerial range.

VI. DISCUSSION
A. Robot Design
Fig. 4 shows that the propeller efficiency decreases when the pro-
peller is mounted on the robot. This indicates that one could improve
the design by isolating the air flow through each propeller using a
Fig. 14. Experimentally obtained ratio of the HyTAQs terrestrial range to
separating structure or by increasing the space between the propellers. aerial range as a function of speed.
The addition of the cage to the quadrotor also decreases the effi-
ciency. Therefore, the cages design can also be improved to minimize
the power losses. Although the cage structure is relatively open, we
assumed the robots drag coefficient to be equal to that of a solid cylin-
der, a reasonable assumption based on the experimental data. Thus, a fly. For instance, at 2 m/s, the rolling distance on linoleum is about
different cage design could lower its drag coefficient and improve the 11 times greater than the aerial range. This ratio decreases as the speed
efficiency, especially at high speeds. One possibility is to eliminate the increases. We could not drive the robot at speeds higher than 6 m/s, but
cages middle bars and leave just two wheels on the sides, although this extrapolation of available experimental data (see Fig. 13) shows that
would reduce the cages protective ability. beyond 8 m/s rolling becomes less efficient than flying.
The optimal pitch angles and velocities from Table I are very close
to the analytically estimated values shown in Fig. 8, especially for the
experiments on artificial turf. Fig. 14 shows that the HyTAQs operation
B. Performance
time is about ten times greater when rolling on the ground compared
The experimental results, which are summarized in Table I, indicate with the flight mode and the robots range on linoleum is 2.5 times
that at low speeds, it is much more efficient to roll on the ground than greater than the flight range.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS, VOL. 30, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2014
VII. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
In this paper, we analyzed the performance of our novel hybrid
robot, the HyTAQ, both analytically and experimentally. The HyTAQ
is unique in that it effectively operates in both flight and on the ground.
This design addresses the range issues of aerial-only systems and ob-
stacle avoidance issues of terrestrial-only robots.
The dynamics of the robot were accurately modeled by taking into
account aerodynamic and rolling resistance forces. The model was used
to analyze the robots operation time and range both on the ground and
during flight.
The quadrotor was tested in a wind tunnel to verify its power con-
sumption as a function of speed during flight. The terrestrial mode of
HyTAQ was tested on three terrain types at different velocities. The
results show that the robots terrestrial range on linoleum is 11 times
greater than the quadrotors aerial range at equal speeds. This ratio
decreases as the rolling resistance increases. The results also verify the
robots optimal pitch angle and velocity to achieve its maximum range.
The HyTAQs unique capabilities create interesting questions re-
garding planning a time and energy-efficient path for a challenging
terrain. In the future, we plan to incorporate the results obtained in this
paper into a planning algorithm to obtain optimal plan for the motion
of the robot in real-world applications.
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