Self-adapting landing gear for multi-rotor drones

Abstract

Today drones are widely used to carry out various tasks in diverse settings. Most drones come equipped with a fixed two-legged landing gear which is meant for landing on relatively flat surfaces. In many applications, a dynamic landing gear that can adapt itself to uneven surfaces such as slopes and rocks would be beneficial.This thesis investigates the feasibility of designing and developing a landing gear for drones that is capable of adapting itself to land on uneven surfaces while minimizing the impact on the flight capabilities of the drone. A three-legged landing gear was designed and developed to fit a hexacopter drone. The landing gear can sense the landing area and adapt itself accordingly by creating vertical displacements between its legs. Data was collected with handheld experiments and flight testing to evaluate the performance of the landing gear. The results of the handheld experiments show that the landing gear can adapt itself to uneven surfaces and slopes up to a 40-degree angle. The flight testing results show, with some exceptions such as crashes, that the landing gear is capable of landing a drone on uneven surfaces such as sloped grass and hardened lava fields.