First Design and Testing of an Unmanned Three-mode Vehicle

Abstract

This paper investigates the first design and testing for an unmanned three-mode vehicle. The vehicle feature’s built in four main components, whereby a coaxial rotor set, propeller, wheels, and pontoon mechanism allow work independently of one another when fly on the air, move on the land and capable of traversing across the water surface. Moreover, that the vehicle performed vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) on the ground and from the surface of water. The design procedure includes vehicle structural design by three-dimensional solid modelling using SolidWorks TM and CosmosWorks TM, proposed design  considerations and performance calculation. In testing, vehicle had considered by demonstration on the air, land and water. The variety of mechanism’s transformation set to support manoeuvre on three-mode operation has been constructed to verify the feasibility and reliability of this vehicle. The gross weight of the vehicle is 557 grams and the (desired) endurance is about 10 minutes. A control algorithm has also been proposed to allow the unmanned vehicle to travel from its current location to another location specified with changeable channel on Tx Modulator. Flight and surface tests were performed following fabrication. The study shows that the design can be followed and used for build an unmanned three-mode vehicle for research and development purposes.