Design and Development of Tether-Powered Multirotor Micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicle System for Remote-Controlled Construction Machine

Abstract

In Japan, several types of natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions have occurred and will likely occur in the future. Therefore, civil engineering works are required for restoration after such natural disasters, and teleoperated construction machines have been developed to facilitate such works. During the operation of teleoperated construction machines, images from various viewpoints e.g., an image from the perspective of the machines or that from the side of the bucket is essential for carrying out tasks efficiently. However, in the case of the initial response to natural disasters, it is difficult to use dedicated, conventional camera-equipped vehicles and fixed cameras on external towers to obtain such perspective images, particularly within a month after the disaster. Therefore, in this research, we propose a tether-powered multirotor micro unmanned aerial vehicle (MUAV) system to obtain images from various perspectives for the operator of a teleoperated construction machine. The features of the proposed system are (1) high voltage for transmitting electric power through thin tether, (2) tension control of the tether in vibration and inclined conditions, and (3) wired VDSL communication between the MUAV and the helipad. In this paper, we introduce the design and implementation of the proposed system. In addition, we report the results of the field test of the tethered MUAV mounted on a construction machine.