Design and Analysis of a Multimodal Hybrid Amphibious Vehicle
Yuhang Meng, Hui Ye, Xiaofei Yang, Zhengrong Xiang
Abstract
This article introduces an aquatic-aerial autonomous amphibious vehicles (AquaAAV), which can fly in the air, sail on the water surface, and takeoff and land vertically from the water surface and ground, and fast cross-domain work is realized. The design successfully balances the performance of the vehicle in the air and on the water surface with the four <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">X</i>-layout aerial thrusters and dual underwater propulsion modules. A multimodal vehicle mathematical model is proposed by switched control concepts, each mode feature of the AquaAAV is included in the model, and the model parameters are identified, which provides a theoretical basis for the study of amphibious vehicle control algorithms. The ability of autonomous control and cross-domain of the vehicle is verified by the full-mission test. The simulation and field test results show that the mathematical model is reasonable and accurate, and the vehicle shows good aerial performance and surface control effect.