FRANÇAIS
A showcase of ÉTS researchers’ publications and other contributions
SEARCH

Modular foldable airship concept for subterranean exploration

Salas Gordoniz, Jorge Esteban, Reeves, Nicolas and St-Onge, David. 2021. « Modular foldable airship concept for subterranean exploration ». In ASME 2021 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC/CIE) (En ligne, Aug. 17-20, 2021) The American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

[thumbnail of St-Onge-D-2021-22983.pdf] PDF
St-Onge-D-2021-22983.pdf - Accepted Version
Restricted access to Repository staff only
Use licence: All rights reserved to copyright holder.

Download (5MB) | Request a copy

Abstract

The exploration of new lands has always been a source of motivation for mankind. Despite the common idea that our planet is fully known, a huge number of inaccessible places still remains unvisited today, especially below the surface. Recent advances in robotics allow some of these locations to be explored by unmanned vehicles. This paper presents the design of a 3-modules lighter-than-air vehicle specifically conceived to autonomously explore inaccessible caves and underground environments. The design is inspired from an arthropod, scutigera coleoptrata, a long-legged centipede commonly found in our houses. Instead of crawling on walls like its biological counterpart, the robotic scutigera hovers and flies in cave tunnels. The aim is to develop a flexible semi-rigid, segmented airship that can withstand long, smooth explorations of caves while transmitting in real-time the images and sounds that it captures. To develop the model of the system, the kinematics of the modules are obtained in the inertial frame, and the dynamic derivation of the vehicle is obtained using Kane’s equations, which can also be extended for an n-bodies system. Its motion is illustrated with a couple of simplified scenarios in the horizontal plane and only having actuation in the front, or first module, of the airship. A structural design of the modules is presented and supported with a proof-of-concept prototype.

Item Type: Conference proceeding
Professor:
Professor
St-Onge, David
Affiliation: Génie mécanique
Date Deposited: 03 Aug 2021 13:21
Last Modified: 10 Jun 2022 17:36
URI: https://espace2.etsmtl.ca/id/eprint/22983

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item