Design and Experimental Validation of a Prototype of Ducted-Fan Aerial Service Robot

This work presents the design and experimental validation of an innovative prototype of ducted- fan aerial robot specifically realized for tasks that may require physical interaction between the vehicle and the environment. The prototype is characterized by a redundant number of aerodynamic control surfaces that can be governed, though suitable control allocation policies, in order to obtain the desired resultant control torque vector to be employed by the autopilot to stabilize the system dynamics. Experiments are then presented in order both to derive the aerodynamic characteristics of the control surfaces and to validate the performances of the proposed design.