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Design and Testing of an Unmanned Small-scale Air-Land-Water Vehicle

Arhami Mutalib, Khalid Hasnan, Abas Wahab

Abstract


This paper presents the design and testing for an unmanned small-scale air-land-water vehicle or in short “USALWaV”. This work refers to the initial design of parts followed by the assemblies to form components of the vehicle. The vehicle features is a unique device system built into four
main components, whereby a coaxial rotor set, propeller, suspension, and pontoon set allows work independently of one another when fly on-air, move on-land, and capable of traversing across surface of water. Moreover that the vehicle was able to perform vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) on the ground and surface of water. The design procedure includes vehicle structural design by 3D-solid modeling using SolidWork, proposed design specifications, aerodynamics performance of vehicle calculation, and demonstration test. The variety of mechanisms transformation set to support maneuver on three media operation has been constructed to verify the feasibility and reliability of the vehicle. A control algorithm has also been proposed to allow the unmanned small scale air-land-water 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 small-scale air-land-water vehicle for research and development purposes.

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.21535%2FProICIUS.2010.v6.438

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