An Amphibious Quad-Rotor for Pipeline Inspection: System Design, Modeling and Control

Regular inspections are essential for wastewater pipelines, where the environment is narrow and confined. Traditional methods, such as pipe robots with heavy cables, are costly, time-consuming, and difficult to operate. In this work, we develop an amphibious system that combines a quadcopter with a surface vehicle to create a hybrid unmanned aerial floating vehicle (HUAFV). We model the nonlinear dynamics of the HUAFV based on the dynamic models of both a quadcopter and a floating surface vehicle. The HUAFV model is validated through experiments and simulations. A PI controller is designed, tuned using the developed model, and implemented on the platform. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the HUAFV.