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Cable-driven legged landing gear for unmanned helicopter: Prototype design, optimization and performance assessment

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Abstract

Unmanned helicopters equipped with adaptive landing gear will dramatically extend their application especially in dealing with challenging terrains. This study presents a novel cable-driven legged landing gear (CLG) with differential transmission for unmanned helicopters in complex landing environments. To obtain the preferred configuration of the legged mechanism, a multi-objective optimization framework for the CLG is constructed by concurrently considering terrain adaptability, landing stability and reasonable linkage of internal forces. The non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II is employed to numerically acquire the optimal scale parameters that guide the mechanical design of the CLG. An unmanned helicopter prototype equipped with the devised CLG is developed with key performance assessment. Experimental results show that the devised CLG can provide energy-efficient support over uneven terrains (totally driven torque demand less than 0.1 N m) in quasi-static landing tests, and favorable terrain adaptability (posture fluctuation of the fuselage less than ±1°) in unknown slope landing tests. These exhibited merits give the proposed CLG the potential to enhance the landing performance of future aircraft in extreme environments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150001, China

    BaoLin Tian, HaiBo Gao, HaiTao Yu, HaoMin Shan, HongYing Yu & ZongQuan Deng

  2. China Academy of Aerospace Science and Innovation, Beijing, 100048, China

    JunChen Hou

Authors
  1. BaoLin Tian
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  2. HaiBo Gao
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  3. HaiTao Yu
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  4. HaoMin Shan
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  5. JunChen Hou
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  6. HongYing Yu
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  7. ZongQuan Deng
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Correspondence to HaiTao Yu.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52175011).

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Tian, B., Gao, H., Yu, H. et al. Cable-driven legged landing gear for unmanned helicopter: Prototype design, optimization and performance assessment. Sci. China Technol. Sci. 67, 1196–1214 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-023-2585-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-023-2585-8

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