  In recent years, multiple types of locomotion methods for robots have been
developed and enabled to adapt to multiple domains. In particular, aerial
robots are useful for exploration in several situations, taking advantage of
its three-dimensional mobility. Moreover, some aerial robots have achieved
manipulation tasks in the air. However, energy consumption for flight is large
and thus locomotion ability on the ground is also necessary for aerial robots
to do tasks for long time. Therefore, in this work, we aim to develop
deformable multirotor robot capable of rolling movement with its entire body
and achieve motions on the ground and in the air. In this paper, we first
describe the design methodology of a deformable multilinked air-ground hybrid
multirotor. We also introduce its mechanical design and rotor configuration
based on control stability. Then, thrust control method for locomotion in air
and ground domains is described. Finally, we show the implemented prototype of
the proposed robot and evaluate through experiments in air and terrestrial
domains. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time to achieve the
rolling locomotion by multilink structured mutltrotor.
