Development, analysis and control of a spherical aerial vehicle

With the ability to provide close surveillance in narrow space or urban areas, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been of great interest to many scholars and researchers. The spherical aerial vehicle offers substantial design advantages over the conventional small aerial vehicles. As a new kind of small aerial vehicles, spherical aerial vehicle is presented in this paper. Firstly, the unique structure of spherical aerial vehicle is presented in detail. And then the dynamics theory based on this vehicle’s structure is analyzed, and the equations of force and moment acting on the aircraft were deduced. Based on the above, the dynamics model of spherical aerial vehicle is derived and the nonlinear state equation is established. The control system of the spherical aerial vehicle’s flight motion, including the hardware and software parts, is presented concretely. The backstepping control method is used in the state equation to get the stability of the spherical aerial vehicle’s motion. At last, the experimental results and simulation analysis are provided to confirm the feasibility of the spherical aerial vehicle’s flight movement in the air.

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