Robot designs can take many inspirations from nature, where there are many examples of highly resilient and fault-tolerant locomotion strategies to navigate complex terrains by using multi-functional appendages. For example, Chukar and Hoatzin birds can repurpose their wings for quadrupedal walking and wing-assisted incline running (WAIR) to climb steep surfaces. We took inspiration from nature and designed a morphing robot with multi-functional thruster-wheel appendages that allows the robot to change its mode of locomotion by transforming into a rover, quad-rotor, mobile inverted pendulum (MIP), and other modes. In this work, we derive a dynamic model and formulate a nonlinear model predictive controller to perform WAIR to showcase the unique capabilities of our robot. We implemented the model and controller in a numerical simulation and experiments to show their feasibility and the capabilities of our transforming multi-modal robot.

翻译：机器人设计可从自然界中高度鲁棒且容错的运动策略汲取灵感，例如石鸡和麝雉等鸟类可通过重新利用翅膀实现四足行走及翼助斜坡奔跑（WAIR），从而攀爬陡峭表面。受此启发，我们设计了一种配备多功能推进轮附肢的变形机器人，该机器人能够通过转换为漫游车、四旋翼飞行器、移动倒立摆（MIP）等多种形态来改变运动模式。本文针对该机器人推导了动力学模型，并设计了非线性模型预测控制器以实现翼助斜坡奔跑，从而展示其独特能力。我们通过数值仿真和实验对所建模型与控制器进行验证，证实了其可行性及该多模态变形机器人的卓越性能。