WO2018090942A1

WO2018090942A1 - Unmanned aerial vehicle provided with retractable and extensible undercarriage device

Info

Publication number: WO2018090942A1
Application number: PCT/CN2017/111261
Authority: WO
Inventors: 阮桂
Original assignee: 捷西迪（广州）光学科技有限公司
Priority date: 2016-11-18
Filing date: 2017-11-16
Publication date: 2018-05-24
Also published as: CN206265292U

Abstract

An unmanned aerial vehicle provided with a retractable and extensible undercarriage device comprises a fuselage (200), a photographing device (300), a flight state detection device, an undercarriage (400), an undercarriage driving mechanism, and a control unit (250). By means of the flight state detection device, conditions about takeoff, landing and other flight states are correctly recognized, and accordingly the unmanned aerial vehicle is automatically controlled to automatically retract and extend the undercarriage (400). When the unmanned aerial vehicle leaves the land and takes off, the undercarriage (400) gradually moves to a position outside the photographing range of a lens module (320) according to a state in which the unmanned aerial vehicle is in a liftoff state, so that the undercarriage (400) is prevented from shading the visual field of the photographing device (300), thereby improving an effective photographing range, and avoiding limitation of a photographing visual angle.

Description

Unmanned aircraft with retractable landing gear

Technical field

The invention relates to the technical field of unmanned aircraft, in particular to an unmanned aircraft with a retractable landing gear device.

Background technique

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles to mount photographic devices from aerial photography has become increasingly fashionable. In order to obtain more information in a single shot, a photographic apparatus having a wide-angle lens, a super wide-angle lens, or a fisheye lens having a viewing angle of approximately 180 degrees or more is often mounted on the unmanned aircraft. The ultimate wide-angle lens, the fisheye lens, captures the surrounding image and the image behind the lens. Rotorcrafts used in aerial photography on the market usually use fixed landing gear, and the landing gear and camera (or pan/tilt) are fixedly attached to the bottom of the fuselage. When the photographic device uses a wide-angle lens or an ultra-wide-angle lens, the angle of view is easily blocked by the landing gear, forming a dead angle and reducing the effective shooting range.

Summary of the invention

The technical problem to be solved by the present invention is to provide an unmanned aircraft with a retractable landing gear device that is compact in structure and has an unrestricted viewing angle.

A technical solution adopted to solve the above technical problem: an unmanned aircraft with a retractable landing gear device, including a fuselage; a photographing device connected to the fuselage through a support arm; and a flight state detecting device that detects the The flight state of the unmanned aircraft, the flight state includes an off-land state or a landing state; the landing gear is disposed at a lower portion of the fuselage and can be folded away from the photographing range in a manner of being deflected or telescoped relative to the fuselage Switching between a position and a lowered position within the photographic range; a landing gear drive mechanism that drives the landing gear to move between a stowed position and a lowered position; and a control unit that reads the flight state detection acquired The flight state of the human aircraft and controlling the landing gear drive mechanism to drive the landing gear to switch between the stowed position and the lowered position.

Further, the flight state detecting device further includes a distance measuring sensor disposed at a lower portion of the fuselage for detecting a distance of the unmanned aircraft from the ground below the unmanned aircraft.

Further, the landing gear end is hinged to the fuselage, and the landing gear can be deflected by 0-75 degrees with respect to the fuselage.

Further, a support arm drive mechanism that drives the support arm to telescope in a vertical direction or is deflected relative to the body is provided on the body.

Further, a memory for storing the correspondence between the focal length of the lens module of the photographing device and the stowed position of the landing gear and an acceleration sensor for obtaining the acceleration of the unmanned aircraft in the vertical direction are further included.

Beneficial effect: This unmanned aircraft with retractable landing gear device correctly recognizes the flight status of the unmanned aircraft by land and landing through the flight state detecting device, and automatically controls the unmanned aircraft to automatically close and lower the landing gear. . When the unmanned aircraft takes off from the land, the landing gear will gradually move outside the shooting range of the lens module according to the unmanned aircraft's grounding state, thereby preventing the landing gear from obscuring the field of view of the photographic device, improving the effective shooting range and avoiding The shooting angle is limited.

DRAWINGS

The present invention will be further described below in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and embodiments;

1 is a schematic structural view of a first embodiment of the present invention;

2 is a schematic structural view of a second embodiment of the present invention.

detailed description

"Retracted" as used herein refers to the movement of the landing gear away from the range of the lens viewing angle by deformation or relative movement with the position of the fuselage, and "down" is the reverse process of the above "retracting". After "down" the landing gear, the unmanned aircraft can rely on the landing gear to contact the ground to support the unmanned aircraft body and prevent other devices on the unmanned aircraft from coming into contact with the ground.

1 shows a first embodiment of a drone of the present invention. The unmanned aircraft may be a small aircraft that is operated in the air for external control. The unmanned aircraft is provided with a fuselage 200 and a photographing device 300 loaded by the fuselage 200. . However, the unmanned aircraft may also be a semi-autonomous aircraft with built-in GPS, a control program previously programmed into a route or the like, or a fully autonomous aircraft that does not require external operation. The drone is loaded with a battery.

The external user can use an operating device (such as a remote controller or the like) to send commands to the unmanned aircraft through wireless communication, thereby controlling the take-off, air flight, and landing of the unmanned aircraft. In addition, the photographing device 300 mounted on the unmanned aircraft can also be operated.

The photographing device 300 refers to a camera or a video recorder having an ultra wide-angle fisheye lens that can capture an image. The image signal transmitted from the photographing device 300 to the operating device can be continuously transmitted from the power of the unmanned aircraft from on to off, or can be transmitted according to an instruction given to the operating device by the user.

In the present embodiment, the body 200 has an X shape, and four horizontal rotors rotatable around the respective rotation axes are mounted at the four ends of the X-shape, and the body 200 is provided with the respective horizontal rotors. Four wing drive mechanisms corresponding to the rotation around the rotary shaft. A built-in DC motor such as a wing drive mechanism rotates a horizontal rotor or the like by a rotating force of a DC motor to power the flight of the unmanned aircraft, and the body 200 includes a control unit 250 that controls the operation states of the four wing drive mechanisms, respectively. The unit 250 controls the direction of motion of the unmanned aircraft by separately adjusting the rotational speed of each wing drive mechanism.

The bottom surface of the photographing device 300 loaded by the body 200 is provided with a fisheye lens module 320 including a lens module 320, for example, a viewing angle greater than or equal to 180 degrees, and the photographing range at this viewing angle is as shown. In normal use (photographing), the optical axis direction of the lens module 320 is downward in the vertical direction, perpendicular to the horizontal plane, and parallel to the vertical direction. The bottom of the photographing device 300 provided with the lens module 320 has an inverted flat top to prevent the viewing angle of the fisheye lens module 320 from being blocked.

The photographing device 300 captures an image from the fisheye lens module 320. The photographing apparatus 300 further includes a photographing unit that is disposed on the incident side and the opposite optical axis of the light incident on the lens module 320 to capture an image from the lens module 320. The photography department refers to an image sensor such as a CCD or a CMOS. The photographing device 300 has hardware information related to the focal length or the angle of view of the lens module 320. The unmanned aircraft can connect the photographing device 300 through the control unit 250, and read related hardware information such as the lens focal length or the angle of view from the photographing device 300, thereby commanding The components of the unmanned aircraft react to information such as the focal length of the lens or the angle of view. The photographing device 300 has an imaging range, and the imaging range is determined by the angle of view of the lens module 320.

The body 200 is provided with a support arm 270 and a support arm drive mechanism 260. The photographing device 300 is connected to the body 200 through a support arm 270 disposed on the body 200, and when the photographing device 300 adopts a fisheye lens of 180 degrees or more By using the support arm 270 to increase the distance between the photographing device 300 and the bottom surface of the drone, it is possible to prevent the drone itself from obscuring the visible range of the photographing device 300. Illustratively, the support arm drive mechanism 260 is disposed inside or in the middle of the support arm 270, including a stepping motor, and cooperates with the support arm 270 through a gear, a rack, a tooth guide groove, etc., so that the photographing device 300 can be vertically oriented. Move up and down, or move and/or rotate relative to the body 200 in a specified direction (eg, front, back, left, and right). The control unit 250 is incorporated into a micro-multipurpose computer built into the body portion of the body 200 in the center of the X-shape. The support arm 270 hangs from directly below the main body portion of the body 200, and can be elongated or shortened in the vertical direction under the driving of the support arm driving mechanism 260 (for example, the support arm 270 is sleeve-shaped, and the inner surface is provided with a tooth guide. The groove is matched by the gear driven by the stepping motor on the support arm driving mechanism 260, and the gear guiding groove is driven by the supporting arm driving mechanism 260 to drive the supporting arm 270 to expand and contract, or is relatively large with respect to the body 200 Deflection in one direction (for example, the support arm 270 and the support arm drive mechanism 260 cooperate with each other through the mutually coupled gears, and the stepping motor of the support arm drive mechanism 260 drives the gear to rotate, thereby driving the support arm 270 to be deflected relative to the body 200), thereby The space of the support arm 270 in the vertical direction is saved. In addition, the deflection of the support arm 270 in a plurality of directions with respect to the body 200 may also cause the optical axis direction of the photographing apparatus 300 to be relatively perpendicular when the body 200 is tilted, thereby improving the picture stability of photography. Further, the support arm drive mechanism 260 may also be disposed inside the photographing device 300.

In addition, the photographing device 300 may be connected to the support arm 270 by a loading mechanism. The loading mechanism refers to a mechanism that can load components and can rotate 360°, and has a built-in loading mechanism driving device. For example, a bearing extending from a central axis in a direction orthogonal to the optical axis direction of the lens module 320 is formed on the outer surface of the photographing device 300 opposite to the loading mechanism driving device, and the loading mechanism driving device may be provided to extend in the same direction as the bearing. And the rotating shaft is fitted on the bearing. In this case, the loading mechanism driving device supports the photographing device 300 by fitting the rotating shaft to the bearing, and rotates the photographing device 300 by rotating the shaft and the bearing. On the other hand, as the loading mechanism driving device, for example, a non-coaxial sector gear set having a plurality of teeth on the outer circumference and having a plurality of teeth on the outer circumference of the photographing device 300 opposite to the loading mechanism driving device is formed, and loaded. The mechanism driving device may be provided with a motor and a circular gear that can control the number of rotations such as a stepping motor or a servo motor. The gear is supported by a rotating shaft of the motor, and has teeth on the outer circumference that are complementary to the teeth of the sector gear. In this case, the loading mechanism driving device causes the teeth of the circular gear and the teeth of the sector gear to mesh with each other, and changes the rotational force of the motor to the rotational force of the sector gear, thereby changing the angle of the body 200 with respect to the photographing device 300. . There are at least two sets of sector gears whose gear axes are orthogonal to each other to achieve a pair of rotations in an orthogonal direction.

The flight state detection device (not shown) is also provided on the unmanned aircraft. The flight state detecting device may be disposed inside the fuselage 200 of the unmanned aircraft. In the present embodiment, the flight state detecting device uses the industrial system solution A3 multi-rotor flight control system produced by DJI. The control system can integrate D-RTK with centimeter accuracy GNSS modules, smart ESC, smart battery and Lightbridge 2 HD image transfer. Developers can use DJI Onboard SDK and Mobile The SDK customizes the application to get aircraft status information in real time and control the aircraft, pan/tilt and camera. The A3 series is equipped with a rich hardware interface such as CAN and API to connect to third-party sensors or other devices. It is possible to detect that the current unmanned aircraft is in an off-state or landing state and send the status to the control unit 250. The landing state described therein includes not only the state of being parked on the ground, but also the stage of not flying to a predetermined height during the take-off process, and being closer to the ground during the landing, and the landing gear 400 needs to be switched to the down position. The flight status of the stage.

Illustratively, the flight state detecting device provided on the body 200 may include a distance measuring sensor and an acceleration sensor. A ranging sensor is disposed at a lower portion of the unmanned aircraft body 200 for detecting a distance of the unmanned aircraft from a ground below the distance measuring sensor, and the ranging sensor may be a laser transmission distance measuring sensor or an ultrasonic distance measuring sensor. In order to improve the measurement accuracy when approaching the ground, it is preferable to use a laser transmission distance sensor or a pulse ultrasonic distance measuring sensor. An acceleration sensor is used to obtain the acceleration of the unmanned aircraft; exemplarily, the acceleration sensor employs a piezoelectric triaxial acceleration sensor.

The lower portion of the body 200 is provided with a landing gear 400 and a landing gear drive mechanism. The landing gear 400 has a columnar body or a T-shape for supporting the unmanned aircraft, and is fixed on the outer surface of the lower portion of the body 200, and is movable relative to the body 200 by deformation, expansion or deflection, and the like. The drop frame 400 can be switched between a stowed position outside the photographing range of the photographing apparatus 300 and a stowed position located within the photographing range. The landing gear drive mechanism is disposed inside the body 200, and the landing gear 400 is coupled by a gear or a rack or the like to drive the landing gear 400 to move. The landing gear drive mechanism can employ a stepper motor. The landing gear drive mechanism is also coupled to control unit 250 for receiving control signals from control unit 250. In the present embodiment, the landing gear 400 is four cylindrical devices. One end connected to the landing gear drive mechanism of the body 200 is a half gear, and the other end is wrapped with rubber to enhance the friction between the ground and the ground. . The landing gear drive mechanism is coupled to the half gear provided at the end of the landing gear 400 by a gear coupled to the stepping motor, and the landing gear 400 is rotated relative to the body 200 by the driving of the stepping motor. When in the landing state, each landing gear 400 is in the lowered position indicated by the broken line frame; when entering the off-land state, each landing gear 400 is from the lowered position, with the connection point with the fuselage 200 as a fulcrum, with respect to the body 200 The direction is deflected away from the direction of the photographing device 300, and is switched to the stowed position indicated by the solid line frame. Wherein, the stowed position and the angle of the body 200 are 0 degrees; the angle of the lowered position and the body 200 is between 45 and 90 degrees, preferably 75 degrees.

The process of detecting the flight state of the unmanned aircraft acquired by the flight state and controlling the landing gear drive mechanism to drive the landing gear 400 to switch between the stowed position and the lowered position is as follows: when the unmanned aircraft is started, the set-on is used The flight state detecting device at the lower portion of the body 200 acquires the current flight state of the unmanned aircraft. Illustratively, the current distance between the unmanned aircraft and the ground is measured by a ranging sensor within the flight state detecting device, and the flight state is determined based on the distance. The ground here includes not only the surface but also the surface of the protrusions on the surface of the building. When the flying height of the unmanned aircraft is high, the air altitude sensor can also be used to obtain the current flying height. The height measured by the barometric height sensor is the absolute height of the unmanned aircraft. When there is a protrusion above the general ground between the unmanned aircraft and the ground, the unmanned aircraft will be difficult to avoid. In addition, the accuracy of the barometric height sensor It is in meters and is subject to factors such as airflow in the city near the ground. Therefore, when flying at low altitude close to the ground, it is necessary to rely on the distance measuring sensor for accurate distance measurement.

After obtaining the current flight state of the unmanned aircraft, if the unmanned aircraft is in a landing state, the landing gear 400 is set to the down position using the landing gear drive mechanism; if the unmanned flight is in the off-road state, the use is utilized The landing gear drive mechanism sets the landing gear 400 to the stowed position.

Obtaining a current distance between the unmanned aircraft and the ground by using a ranging sensor disposed under the fuselage 200; and when the distance is greater than a preset takeoff height threshold, using the landing gear driving mechanism to drive the landing gear 400 according to a preset The speed is moved to a lowered position within the shooting range of the lens module 320 at a constant speed.

The acceleration sensor is used to detect the downward acceleration in the vertical direction. When the acceleration in the vertical direction is greater than the preset warning acceleration threshold, the landing gear driving mechanism is used to drive the landing gear 400 to the shooting range of the lens module 320. Move within the drop position. Specifically, when detecting that the acceleration of the unmanned aircraft in the vertical direction is greater than the preset warning acceleration threshold, determining that the unmanned aircraft is stalled, there is a danger of crashing, and the control unit 250 commands the landing gear drive mechanism to drive the landing gear. The 400 moves to the lowered position to protect the lens.

2 shows a second embodiment of the unmanned aircraft of the present invention, which differs from the first embodiment described above in that the unmanned aircraft has two photographing devices, and the photographing device 300 disposed at the lower portion of the body 200 is first. In the same manner as the photographing apparatus 300 of the embodiment, another photographing device 301 connected to the body by the support arm 270 is provided on the upper portion of the body, and the photographing device 301 has a lens module 321. In the present embodiment, the two camera devices 300 employ a fisheye lens module 320 of 180 degrees or more. The two camera devices 300 are respectively disposed at the upper and lower portions of the body 200, and take images from the upper and lower portions of the body 200. In addition to the photographic range in the first embodiment, there is also a screen synthesis range. The acquired image is processed by the post-software, and the part of the screen synthesis range (the section is about 180 degrees) is intercepted, and the 360-degree video for VR technology is synthesized. The portion of the figure that is within the photographic range and outside the frame synthesis range is cut during post-processing, so that the landing gear 400 is located in this area without reducing the effective photographic range. In the present embodiment, the rotation range of the stowed position of the landing gear 400 is required to be lower, and the switching of the stowed position and the lowered position can be accelerated. The stowed position of the landing gear 400 is within the photographing range of the camera 300 (subject to the viewing angle of the lens module 320), and the combined image range (determined by the length of the landing gear 400 and the positional relationship between the lens module 320 and the landing gear 400) Outside; the drop position is usually within the range of the composite image, and the position of the lens of the lens module 320 that does not touch the ground when the unmanned aircraft is landing can be appropriately selected by those skilled in the art.

The embodiments of the present invention have been described in detail above with reference to the accompanying drawings, but the present invention is not limited to the above-described embodiments, and can be made without departing from the spirit of the invention within the scope of the knowledge of those skilled in the art. Various changes.

Claims

An unmanned aircraft with a retractable landing gear device, comprising:

body;

a photographing device connected to the body through a support arm;

a flight state detecting device that detects a flight state of the unmanned aircraft, the flight state including an off-land state or a landing state;

The landing gear is disposed at a lower portion of the fuselage, and is switchable between a stowed position outside the photographing range and a lowered position in the photographing range in a manner of being deflected or telescoped relative to the body;

a landing gear drive mechanism that drives the landing gear to move between a stowed position and a lowered position;

And a control unit that reads the flight state of the unmanned aircraft acquired by the flight state detection, and controls the landing gear drive mechanism to drive the landing gear to switch between the stowed position and the lowered position.
The unmanned aircraft with a retractable landing gear device according to claim 1, wherein said flight state detecting device further comprises a lower portion of the fuselage for detecting a distance of the unmanned aircraft from the ground below it. Ranging sensor.
The unmanned aircraft with a retractable landing gear device according to claim 1, wherein said landing gear end is hinged to the fuselage, and said landing gear is deflectable by 0-75 degrees with respect to the body.
The unmanned aircraft with a retractable landing gear device according to claim 1, wherein said body is provided with a support arm drive mechanism that drives the support arm to telescope in a vertical direction or to deflect relative to the body.
The unmanned aircraft with a retractable landing gear device according to claim 1, further comprising: a memory for storing a correspondence between a focal length of the lens module of the photographing device and a stowed position of the landing gear, and An acceleration sensor that obtains the acceleration of the unmanned aircraft in the vertical direction.
The unmanned aircraft with a retractable landing gear device according to claim 1, wherein the two photographic devices are connected to the upper and lower portions of the fuselage by support arms.