Multimodality robotic systems: Integrated combined legged-aerial mobility for subterranean search-and-rescue

This work presents a field-hardened autonomous multimodal legged-aerial robotic system for subterranean exploration, extending legged robot to be the carrier of an aerial platform capable rapid deployment in search-and-rescue scenarios. The driving force developing such configurations are requirements large-scale and long-term missions, where payload capacity long battery life is combined integrated with agile motion agent. structured around quadruped Boston Dynamics Spot, enhanced custom configured autonomy sensor as well UAV platform, while agent built quadcopter. novel design hardware implementation onboard suites. Moreover it establishes overall architecture unified supervision approach respecting each locomotion modality, including guidance, navigation, perception, state estimation, control capabilities focus on efficient exploration. complete evaluated real tunnel areas, multiple fully missions goal identifying locating objects interest within environment.