Design optimisation of a reconfigurable perching element for vertical take-off and landing unmanned aerial vehicles

摘要: Vertical Take-off and Landing (VTOL) multi-rotor rotary-wing vehicles face many challenges such as harsh weather conditions low endurance which affect their overall performance usability. The current usage of these types small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (sUAVs) has changed to an urban cluttered environment, the larger fixed-wing UAVs cannot access gain required data. With interesting flight regimes perching, man-portable have found way into military ever growing civilian sector. This paper aims provide a method setting design parameters for reconfigurable perching element, replaces landing gear on VTOL UAV maximum take-off mass (MTOM) <1.5 kg. These are used create concepts along with various different grasping methods cover solution space. A weighted matrix was applied selection optimisation process, where carefully selected criteria weightings were chosen give ability perch top lighting columns, common form street furniture in most environments.