SUGISAKAMASANORI

Journal of Advances in Artificial Life Robotics
Vol. 4(2); September (2023), pp. 94–97
ON LINE ISSN 2435-8061; ISSN-L 2435-8061
https://alife-robotics.org/jallr.html

Research Article

Design of Intelligent Ground Air Multi Robot Collaborative
Transportation System
Hucheng Wang, Huahao Li

College of Electronic Information and Automation, Tianjin University of Science and Technology, 300222, China.

ARTICLE INFO
Article History
Received 15 December 2022
Accepted 26 October 2023
Keywords
Transportation
UGVUAV
Air ground coordination

ABSTRACTWith the rapid development of the logistics industry, the traditional logistics transportation mode
has been difficult to meet the needs of modern logistics. Intelligent ground and air multi-robot
cooperative transportation system can use robot technology to achieve automated and intelligent
logistics transportation, improve logistics efficiency and quality, reduce logistics costs, and meetcustomer needs. This paper introduces a new type of intelligent ground to air multi-robot
cooperative transportation system, which is designed and integrated with a variety of technologies,
such as robot technology, artificial intelligence technology, Internet of Things technology, etc., topromote technological innovation and development. This paper introduces the research status andbackground of intelligent ground to air multi-robot cooperative transportation system, andintroduces the working principle and equipment selection of the system in detail.

© 2022 The Author. Published by Sugisaka Masanori at ALife Robotics Corporation Ltd.
This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)

1. Introduction

transportation system is developed by using existing
mobile sensing resources such as drones and groundmobile vehicles to obtain the required perceptual data, andcarrying out communication and cooperation under thetechnical support of the Internet of Things to complete thetransmission of information and the transmission ofinstructions.
This design has the following advantages:
In terms of hardware technology, the load capacity of
UAV is relatively small, but the sensing capacity andsensing range are relatively strong, and the intelligent
vehicle is just the opposite, so this design combines theadvantages of a large sensing range of UAV and a strong
carrying capacity of intelligent vehicle.
In terms of production benefits, the intelligent robot
ground-air cooperative unmanned transportation system
reduces the participation of personnel in the logistics anddistribution process, reduces the expenditure on personnel,and avoids the safety problems of personnel in the
distribution process, greatly improving economic benefits.
In the context of unmanned distribution, unmanneddistribution can change the previous face-to-face logistics

The logistics industry faces challenges such as traffic
congestion, high logistics costs, and insufficient labor. The
intelligent ground and air multi-robot cooperativetransportation system can solve these problems throughautomated and intelligent transportation methods, andimprove the competitiveness of the logistics industry.
China's logistics market is huge, but the logistics transportmode is still dominated by traditional transport mode, andthe "last kilometer" in logistics distribution has also
become a transportation problem in the logistics industry[1]. Data show that China's end distribution costs haveaccounted for more than 30% of the total cost of thelogistics industry, and some even account for 50%. With
the continuous development and maturity of UAVtechnology, UAV has been widely used in energy,agriculture, disaster relief and other industries. The
deepening and diversification of UAV applications
provides more possibilities for the development of thelogistics industry [2], [3].
Under the research background of ground-to-air
cooperative mobile group intelligent sensing technology,
the intelligent robot ground-to-air cooperative unmannedCorresponding author’s E-mail: 1983618432@qq.com URL: www.tust.edu.cn

94terminal distribution scenarios, to a certain extent, improvethe degree of intelligence and enhance productivity.
At the public level, the intelligent multi-robot airground cooperative transportation system can improve theefficiency of logistics distribution, reduce transportation
costs, improve logistics transportation services, and enable
the service population to obtain better logistics distribution
service experience.
(a)

2. Overall design scheme
The intelligent multi-robot air-ground cooperativetransportation system is mainly divided into three units,
which are UAV unit, ground monitoring station unit andintelligent vehicle group unit.
First of all, the drone unit and the intelligent vehicle
unit are connected to the ground station unit through thecommunication module for information transmission. The
drone units can communicate with each other, and thedrone can transmit information to the leading intelligentvehicle unit.
The UAV unit has two main functions. On the one
hand, it detects the position information between the target
object to be transported and the UAV itself, and assists theintelligent vehicle unit to carry out the transportation of thetarget object.
Second, in the process of transporting the target
object, the ground environment information around theintelligent vehicle group unit is transmitted to theintelligent vehicle responsible for receiving theinformation, to assist the intelligent vehicle group unit toperceive the surrounding environmental information, andto ensure the safety of the surrounding environment during
the transportation of the target object.
The ground monitoring station unit is mainly
responsible for monitoring the working status of the UAV
unit and the intelligent vehicle group unit, and selecting
the optimal route for the transportation of the target object.
The intelligent vehicle unit transports the cargo after
receiving the optimal route selected by the ground station.
The leader of the smart car is responsible for receiving thetransmission information from the ground station unit andthe drone unit to ensure that the optimal route is followed
and obstacles are avoided. Among them, the intelligent
vehicle unit will adjust the overall intelligent vehicle unit
according to the multi-agent robot consistency algorithm
to ensure that the entire intelligent vehicle unit can stably
and quickly transport the target object to the specified
location.(overall structure Fig 1 (a), (b), (c), (d).

(b)

(c)

(d)

Fig.1. Overall structure

3. Device selection
Device selection is shown in Table 1 and Table 2.
95

UGV

Table 1. Device Selection of UAV
Pixhawk four rotor
aircraftBattery
5200mah 3S lithium battery
Flight control
Pixhawk 2.4.8 Flightmodule
control module
Camera lens
SJ5000GPS module
NEO-M8N GPS module
Image processing
STM32(1)+Opencv3.4.1
moduleThe wireless data transmission module is connectedwith the main control module.

Controlmodule

Table 2. Device Selection of UAV
STM32F103ZET6
microcontroller

On board
communication
module

STM32 (2) sets up LAN through routerfor communication between smart cars;
The wireless data transmission module
is connected with the groundcommunication module.

Fig.2. The schematic diagram of lifting scheme
GPS module

NEO-M8N GPS module

4. Technical realization principle
4.1. Target cargo handlingWe send the transport object and the transport destination
to the system. The ground workstation unit sends pathinformation to the drone unit and the smart car unit
according to the location of the transported object, so thatthe drone and the smart car can fly and transport near thetransported object.
The UAV can collect and identify the transport target
object through the image acquisition and processingfunction, so that the UAV can transmit the position
information of the target object, and keep the flight over
the target object.
After receiving the location information of the target
object sent by the drone unit, the ground workstation unit
performs unified scheduling for the drone unit, so that thedrone is located directly above the target object, andprovides accurate location information for the subsequent
intelligent vehicle transportation of the target object.
The ground station unit issues a transport command,and the unmanned vehicle unit lifts the transport target
object after receiving the command.
Fig. 2 is the schematic diagram of lifting scheme andFig. 3 is the lifting scheme flow chart.

Fig.3. The lifting scheme flow chart

4.2. Target cargo transportation
After the system gets the transport instruction of the target
object, the ground workstation unit will calculate theoptimal transport path of the target object, and at the sametime, receive the position information of the target object
and the location information of the destination where theobject moves, and calculate and plan the best transport
path for them. The ground workstation unit will transmit
the location information of the target object and thedestination location information to the UAV working unit
and the intelligent vehicle group unit through wireless datatransmission, and transport the target object according to
the best planned path after receiving the transport
instruction. Note：96

(1) During the transportation of the target object, thescattered unmanned aircraft will transmit the location
information such as the ground road condition to theinformation collection UAV through wireless transmission.
Information collection The unmanned vehicle will conduct
reasonable obstacle avoidance and path guidance
according to the collected ground road condition
information, and the intelligent vehicle unit will complete
the transportation of the target object under the pathguidance provided by the unmanned vehicle unit.
(2) The ground station unit monitors and observes theoperating status of the UAV unit and the intelligent vehicle
unit in real time, including the operating speed, position
information, path deviation, etc. It can also control thedrone unit and intelligent car unit at any time to prevent
failure and loss. This is also one of the fundamental iot
technologies. Fig. 4 is the schematic diagram of the system.

both to provide more possibilities for the logistics andtransportation industry.
References
1. DORLING K, HEINRICHS J, MESSIER G G, et al. Vehicle
routing problems for drone delivery, IEEE Transactions onSystem, Man and Cybernetics: Systems, 2016, 47(1):70-85.
2. WANG X H, DUAN L J. Dynamic pricing and capacity
allocation of UAV-provided mobile services, Proceedings ofIEEE Conference on Computer Communications. IEEE, 2019:
1855-1863.
3. LIU C H, PIAO C Z, TANG J. Energy-efficient UAV
crowdsensing with multiple charging stations by deeplearning, Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Computer
Communications. IEEE, 2020: 199-208.

Authors Introduction
Mr. Hucheng Wang
He is a master candidate in Tianjin
University of Science and Technology,
majoring in machine learning.

Mr. Huahao LiFig.4. the overall schematic diagram of the system

4.3. Target goods release
When the target object reaches the target position, thetarget object is unloaded, and the UAV unit and theintelligent car unit enter the standby state, which isconvenient to return after the subsequent unloading andcomplete the transportation.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, an intelligent robot unmanned airtransportation system is designed, and its working
principle and system architecture are described. The
development of artificial intelligence technology provides
technical support for ground-air cooperative mobile groupintelligent perception, and the development of Internet ofThings
technology
providesmore
convenient
communication and data transmission methods for groundair cooperative mobile group intelligent perception, which
can make robots work together more efficiently. The
system designed in this paper combines the advantages of97

He is a master candidate in Tianjin
University of Science and Technology,
majoring in Intelligent multibody robot.