In this paper a novel aerial manipulation system is proposed. The mechanical structure of the system, the number of thrusters and their geometry will be derived from technical optimization problems. The aforementioned problems are defined by taking into consideration the desired actuation forces and torques applied to the end-effector of the system. The framework of the proposed system is designed in a CAD Package in order to evaluate the system parameter values. Following this, the kinematic and dynamic models are developed and an adaptive backstepping controller is designed aiming to control the exact position and orientation of the end-effector in the Cartesian space. Finally, the performance of the system is demonstrated through a simulation study, where a manipulation task scenario is investigated.
Problems associated with physical interactions using aerial mobile manipulators (AMM) are being independently addressed with respect to mobility and manipulability. Multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are a common choice for mobility while on-board manipulators are increasingly be used for manipulability. However, the dynamic coordination between the UAV and on-board manipulator remains a significant obstacle to enable dexterous manipulation with high precision. This paper presents an AMM system configuration to addresses both the mobility and manipulability issues together. A fully-actu…
The tasks that an aerial manipulator can perform are incredibly diverse. However, nowadays the technology is not completely developed to achieve complex tasks autonomously. That's why we propose a human-in-the-loop system that can control a semi-autonomous aerial manipulator to accomplish these kinds of tasks. Furthermore, motivated by the growing trend of virtual reality systems, together with teleoperation, we develop a system composed of: an aerial manipulator model programmed in PX4 and modeled in Gazebo, a virtual reality immersion with an interactive controller, and the interconnection b…
Harbin Institute of Technology（哈尔滨工业大学）；Peng Cheng Laboratory（鹏城实验室）
For the aerial manipulator that performs aerial work tasks, the actual operating environment it faces is very complex, and it is affected by internal and external multi-source disturbances. In this paper, to effectively improve the anti-disturbance control performance of the aerial manipulator, an adaptive neural network backstepping control method based on variable inertia parameter modeling is proposed. Firstly, for the intense internal coupling disturbance, we analyze and model it from the perspective of the generation mechanism of the coupling disturbance, and derive the dynamics model of …
This study aims to design a motion/force controller for an aerial manipulator which guarantees the tracking of time-varying motion/force trajectories as well as the stability during the transition between free and contact motions. To this end, we model the force exerted on the end-effector as the Kelvin-Voigt linear model and estimate its parameters by recursive least-squares estimator. Then, the gains of the disturbance-observer (DOB)-based motion/force controller are calculated based on the stability conditions considering both the model uncertainties in the dynamic equation and switching be…
ATDM:An Anthropomorphic Aerial Tendon-driven Manipulator with Low-Inertia and High-Stiffness
Research Institute of Intelligent Control and Systems, Harbin Institute of Technology（哈尔滨工业大学智能控制与系统研究所）；Peng Cheng Laboratory（鹏城实验室）；Ningbo Institute of Intelligent Equipment Technology Co., Ltd.（宁波智能装备技术研究院有限公司）
In this paper, an autonomous aerial manipulation task of pulling a plug out of an electric socket is conducted, where maintaining the stability and robustness is challenging due to sudden disappearance of a large interaction force. The abrupt change in the dynamical model before and after the separation of the plug can cause destabilization or mission failure. To accomplish aerial plug-pulling, we employ the concept of hybrid automata to divide the task into three operative modes, i.e, wire-pulling, stabilizing, and free-flight. Also, a strategy for trajectory generation and a design of distur…
Impedance and Stability Targeted Adaptation for Aerial Manipulator with Unknown Coupling Dynamics
Robotics Research Center, International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad (IIIT-H)（印度海得拉巴国际信息技术学院机器人研究中心）；The University of Manchester（曼彻斯特大学）；Southeast University（东南大学）
This paper presents an estimation and control algorithm for an aerial manipulator using a hexacopter with a 2-DOF robotic arm. The unknown parameters of a payload are estimated by an on-line estimator based on parametrization of the aerial manipulator dynamics. With the estimated mass information and the augmented passivity-based controller, the aerial manipulator can fly with the unknown object. Simulation for an aerial manipulator is performed to compare estimation performance between the proposed control algorithm and conventional adaptive sliding mode controller. Experimental results show …
Aerial robotic systems have raised emerging interests in recent years. In this article, we propose a novel aerial manipulator system that is significantly different from conventional aerial discrete manipulators: An Aerial Continuum Manipulator (AeCoM). The AeCoM compactly integrates a quadrotor with a tendon-driven continuum robotic manipulator. Due to the compact design and the payload bearing ability of tendon-driven continuum robotic arms, the proposed system solved the conflict between payload capacity and dexterity lying in conventional aerial manipulators. Two contributions are made in …
Multi-robot Aerial Soft Manipulator For Floating Litter Collection
GRVC Robotics Lab, Escuela Tecnica Superior de Ingenieria, Universidad de Sevilla（塞维利亚大学技术与工程学院机器人实验室）；Robotics and Mechatronics Department, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer Science (EEMCS) Faculty, University of Twente（特文特大学机器人与机电部门）；Inria, Univ. Rennes, CNRS, IRISA（法国国家信息与自动化技术研究院（Inria））；Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome（罗马大学计算机、控制与管理工程系）
Most aerial manipulators use serial rigid-link designs, which results in large forces when initiating contacts during manipulation and could cause flight stability difficulty. This limitation could potentially be improved by the compliance of continuum manipulators. To achieve this goal, we present the novel design of a compact, lightweight, and modular cable-driven continuum manipulator for aerial drones. We then derive a complete modeling framework for its kinematics, statics, and stiffness (compliance). The framework is essential for integrating the manipulator to aerial drones. Finally, we…
Robust Control of An Aerial Manipulator Based on A Variable Inertia Parameters Model
Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院沈阳自动化研究所）；Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院机器人与智能制造创新研究院）；Ryerson University（瑞尔森大学）
Indian Institute of Science（印度科学学院）；Robert Bosch Center for Cyber Physical Systems（罗伯特·博世信息物理系统研究中心）
Grabbing a manoeuvring target using drones is a challenging problem. This paper presents the design, development, and prototyping of a novel aerial manipulator for target interception. It is a single Degree of Freedom (DoF) manipulator with passive basket-type end-effector. The proposed design is energy efficient, light weight and suitable for aerial grabbing applications. The detailed design of the proposed manipulation mechanism and a novel in-flight extending propeller guard, is reported in this paper.
California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院）；KTH Royal Institute of Technology（瑞典皇家理工学院）
This paper shows that the dynamics of a general class of aerial manipulators, consist of an underactuated multi-rotor base with an arbitrary k-linked articulated manipulator, are differentially flat. Methods of Lagrangian Reduction under broken symmetries produce reduced equations of motion whose key variables: center-of-mass linear momentum, vehicle yaw angle, and manipulator relative joint angles become the flat outputs. Utilizing flatness theory and a second-order dynamic extension of the thrust input, we transform the mechanics of aerial manipulators to their equivalent trivial form with a…
Harbin Institute of Technology（哈尔滨工业大学）；State Grid Heilongjiang Electric Power Company Limited Extrahigh Voltage Company（国网黑龙江省电力有限公司超高压公司）
The coupling disturbance between the manipulator and the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) deteriorates the control performance of system. To get high performance of the aerial manipulator, a robust fractional order fast terminal sliding mode control (FOFTSMC) strategy based on mutable inertia parameters is proposed in this paper. First, the dynamics of aerial manipulator with consideration of the coupling disturbance is derived by utilizing mutable inertia parameters. Then, based on the dynamic model, a robust FOFTSMC algorithm is designed to make the system fly steadily under coupling disturbanc…
German Aerospace Center (DLR)（德国航空航天中心（DLR））；Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech)（斯科尔科沃科学技术研究所（斯科尔科沃理工学院））；LAAS-CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心自动化系统实验室）；Université de Toulouse（图卢兹大学）；CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）
High risk of a collision between rotor blades and the obstacles in a complex environment imposes restrictions on the aerial manipulators. To solve this issue, a novel system cable-Suspended Aerial Manipulator (SAM) is presented in this paper. Instead of attaching a robotic manipulator directly to an aerial carrier, it is mounted on an active platform which is suspended on the carrier by means of a cable. As a result, higher safety can be achieved because the aerial carrier can keep a distance from the obstacles. For self-stabilization, the SAM is equipped with two actuation systems: winches an…
QuadHand: A Compact Quadrotor Aerial Manipulator with MRC-SDF-Based Whole-Body Motion Planning
Nanyang Technological University（南洋理工大学）；NTU–VinUni Joint Research Laboratory for Embodied AI and Robotics（南洋理工大学-维纳大学具身智能与机器人联合研究实验室）；VinUniversity（维纳大学）
PreGME: Prescribed Performance Control of Aerial Manipulators based on Variable-Gain ESO
College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University（浙江大学计算机科学与技术学院）；WINDY Lab, Department of Artificial Intelligence, Westlake University（西湖大学人工智能研究院WINDY实验室）；College of Artificial Intelligence, Zhejiang University（浙江大学人工智能学院）；Research Center for Industries of the Future, Westlake University（未来产业研究中心）
Avian-Inspired High-Precision Tracking Control for Aerial Manipulators
College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University（浙江大学计算机科学与技术学院）；Westlake University（西湖大学）；Westlake Institute for Optoelectronics（西湖光电研究院）；Future Industrial Research Centre, Westlake University（西湖大学未来产业研究中心）；Institute of Advanced Technology, Westlake Institute for Advanced Study（西湖高等研究院先进技术研究所）
An Aerial Manipulator for Robot-to-robot Torch Relay Task: System Design and Control Scheme
Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院沈阳自动化研究所）；Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院机器人与智能制造研究院）
Purdue Polytechnic Institute, Purdue University（普渡大学普渡理工学院）；School of Engineering Technology, Purdue Polytechnic Institute, Purdue University（普渡大学普渡理工学院工程技术学院）；Purdue University（普渡大学）
Inspection for structural properties (surface stiffness and coefficient of restitution) is crucial for understanding and performing aerial manipulations in unknown environments, with little to no prior knowledge on their state. Inspection-on-the-fly is the uncanny ability of humans to infer states during manipulation, reducing the necessity to perform inspection and manipulation separately. This paper presents an infrastructure for inspection-on-the-fly method for aerial manipulators using hybrid physical interaction control. With the proposed method, structural properties (surface stiffness a…
Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS)（比尔拉理工学院）；University of Nevada, Reno（内华达大学里诺分校）
Manipulator dynamics, external forces and moments raise issues in stability and efficient control during aerial manipulation. Additionally, multirotor Micro Aerial Vehicles impose stringent limits on payload, actuation and system states. In view of these challenges, this work addressed the design and control of a 3-DoF serial aerial manipulator for contact inspection. A lightweight design with sufficient dexterous workspace for NDT (Non-Destructive Testing) inspection is presented. This operation requires the regulation of normal force on the inspected point. Contact dynamics have been discuss…
Existing studies for environment interaction with an aerial robot have been focused on interaction with static surroundings. However, to fully explore the concept of an aerial manipulation, interaction with moving structures should also be considered. In this paper, a multirotor-based aerial manipulator opening a daily-life moving structure, a hinged door, is presented. In order to address the constrained motion of the structure and to avoid collisions during operation, model predictive control (MPC) is applied to the derived coupled system dynamics between the aerial manipulator and the door …
Planning a time-optimal trajectory for aerial robots is critical in many drone applications, such as rescue missions and package delivery, which have been widely researched in recent years. However, it still involves several challenges, particularly when it comes to incorporating special task requirements into the planning as well as the aerial robot's dynamics. In this work, we study a case where an aerial manipulator shall hand over a parcel from a moving mobile robot in a time-optimal manner. Rather than setting up the approach trajectory manually, which makes it difficult to determine the …
Attaching a robotic manipulator to a flying base allows for significant improvements in the reachability and versatility of manipulation tasks. In order to explore such systems while taking advantage of human capabilities in terms of perception and cognition, bilateral teleoperation arises as a reasonable solution. However, since most telemanipulation tasks require visual feedback in addition to the haptic one, real-time (task-dependent) positioning of a video camera, which is usually attached to the flying base, becomes an additional objective to be fulfilled. Since the flying base is part of…
AeRSoM: An Aerial Rigid-Soft Integrated Manipulator for Contact-Rich Manipulation
Hunan University（湖南大学）；National Engineering Research Center for Robot Visual Perception and Control Technology（国家机器人视觉感知与控制技术工程研究中心）；Beihang University（北京航空航天大学）
Adaptive RISE Control for Dual-Arm Unmanned Aerial Manipulator Systems with Deep Neural Networks
Nankai University（南开大学）；College of Artificial Intelligence（人工智能学院）；Institute of Robotics and Automatic Information System（机器人与自动信息系统研究所）；Engineering Research Center of Trusted Behavior Intelligence, Ministry of Education（教育部可信行为智能工程研究中心）
King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals（法赫德石油和矿产大学）
In this work, the autonomous control of a quadrotor-manipulator unmanned aerial vehicle is treated using an extended dynamic model. Due to persistent aerodynamic disturbances and dynamic couplings, the control of a quadrotor-manipulator unit is cumbersome. Active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) is proposed for the cancellation of the undesirable dynamics while a PD controller is developed for set-point tracking. Parameters were tuned using Gradient Descent-Sequential Quadratic Programming in Simulink design optimization
Hook-Based Aerial Payload Grasping from a Moving Platform
Systems and Control Lab, HUN-REN Institute for Computer Science and Control（系统与控制实验室，HUN-REN计算机科学与控制研究所）；National Laboratory for Autonomous Systems（自主系统国家实验室）；Control Systems Group of the Eindhoven University of Technology（埃因霍温理工大学控制系统组）
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETH Zürich)（苏黎世联邦理工学院）
Flying manipulators are aerial drones with attached rigid-bodied robotic arms and belong to the latest and most actively developed research areas in robotics. The rigid nature of these arms often lack compliance, flexibility, and smoothness in movement. This work proposes to use a soft-bodied robotic arm attached to an omnidirectional micro aerial vehicle (OMAV) to leverage the compliant and flexible behavior of the arm, while remaining maneuverable and dynamic thanks to the omnidirectional drone as the floating base. The unification of the arm with the drone poses challenges in the modeling a…
Predictive Kinematic Coordinate Control for Aerial Manipulators based on Modified Kinematics Learning
College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University（浙江大学计算机科学与技术学院）；Westlake University（西湖大学）；Westlake Institute for Optoelectronics（西湖光电研究院）
Aerial manipulators (AM) exhibit particularly challenging, non-linear dynamics; the UAV and the manipulator it is carrying form a tightly coupled dynamic system, mutually impacting each other. The mathematical model describing these dynamics forms the core of many solutions in non-linear control and deep reinforcement learning. Traditionally, the formulation of the dynamics involves Euler angle parametrization in the Lagrangian framework or quaternion parametrization in the Newton-Euler framework. The former has the disadvantage of giving birth to singularities and the latter of being algorith…
RINGO: Real-time Navigation with a Guiding Trajectory for Aerial Manipulators in Unknown Environments
Institute of Robotics and Automatic Information System（机器人与自动信息系统研究所）；College of Artificial Intelligence（人工智能学院）；Tianjin Key Laboratory of Intelligent Robotics（天津市智能机器人重点实验室）；Nankai University（南开大学）；Institute of Intelligence Technology and Robotic Systems（智能技术与机器人系统研究所）；Shenzhen Research Institute of Nankai University（南开大学深圳研究院）
German Aerospace Center (DLR)（德国航空航天中心）；Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech)（斯科尔科沃科学技术研究所）
This paper presents a design of oscillation damping control for the cable-Suspended Aerial Manipulator (SAM). The SAM is modeled as a double pendulum, and it can generate a body wrench as a control action. The main challenge is the fact that there is only one onboard IMU sensor which does not provide full information on the system state. To overcome this difficulty, we design a controller motivated by a simplified SAM model. The proposed controller is very simple yet robust to model uncertainties. Moreover, we propose a gain tuning rule by formulating the proposed controller in the form of out…
Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Zagreb（萨格勒布大学电气与计算机工程学院）
This paper presents a method for aerial manipulator end-effector trajectory tracking by encompassing dynamics of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and null space of the manipulator attached to it in the motion planning procedure. The proposed method runs in phases. Trajectory planning starts by not accounting for roll and pitch angles of the underactuated UAV system. Next, we propose simulating the dynamics on such a trajectory and obtaining UAV attitude through the model. The full aerial manipulator state obtained in such a manner is further utilized to account for discrepancies in planned an…
As roles for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) continue to diversify, the ability to sense and interact closely with the environment becomes increasingly important. Within this paper we report on the initial flight tests of a novel adaptive compliant actuator which will allow a UAV to carry out such tasks as the "pick and placement" of remote sensors, structural testing and contact-based inspection. Three key results are discussed and presented; the ability to physically compensate impact forces or apply interaction forces by the UAV through the use of the active compliant manipulator; to be able…
IIIT-Hyderabad（海得拉巴国际信息技术学院）；TCS Research（塔塔咨询服务研究院）；University of Michigan（密歇根大学）
This paper proposes a novel controller framework that provides trajectory tracking for an Aerial Manipulator (AM) while ensuring the safe operation of the system under unknown bounded disturbances. The AM considered here is a 2-DOF (degrees-of-freedom) manipulator rigidly attached to a UAV. Our proposed controller structure follows the conventional inner loop PID control for attitude dynamics and an outer loop controller for tracking a reference trajectory. The outer loop control is based on the Model Predictive Control (MPC) with constraints derived using the Barrier Lyapunov Function (BLF) f…
AERMANI-PLACE: Language Guided Object Placement with Aerial Manipulators
Robotics Research Center, IIIT Hyderabad（海得拉巴国际信息技术学院机器人研究中心）；Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester（曼彻斯特大学计算机科学系）；Newcastle University（纽卡斯尔大学）
DuctAM: A Duct-Assisted Quadrotor-Based Aerial Manipulator Enabling High-Force Push-and-Pull Interactions
Nanyang Technological University（南洋理工大学）；NTU–VinUni Joint Research Laboratory for Embodied AI and Robotics（南洋理工大学-维纳大学具身智能与机器人联合研究实验室）；VinUniversity（维纳大学）
Omnidirectional Dual-Arm Aerial Manipulator with Proprioceptive Contact Localization for Landing on Slanted Roofs
BioMorphic Intelligence Lab, Dept. Control & Operations, Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, TU Delft（德鲁特技术大学航空航天工程学院控制与运营系生物形态智能实验室）；School of Engineering Mathematics and Technology, and Bristol Robotics Laboratory, University of Bristol（布里斯托大学工程数学与技术学院及布里斯托机器人实验室）
AERMANI-Diffusion: Regime-Conditioned Diffusion for Dynamics Learning in Aerial Manipulators
Robotics Research Center, International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad（国际信息科技学院海得拉巴分校机器人研究中心）；Department of Computer Science, The University of Manchaster（曼彻斯特大学计算机科学系）
QP-Based Control of an Underactuated Aerial Manipulator under Constraints
Laboratoire d'automatique de Tlemcen（特马森自动化实验室）；Laboratoire d’Ingénierie des Systèmes de Versailles, Université de Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, France（巴黎-萨克雷大学系统工程实验室）；Joint Robotics Laboratory, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)（先进工业科学技术国家研究所机器人联合实验室）
Most aerial manipulators use serial rigid-link designs, which results in large forces when initiating contacts during manipulation and could cause flight stability difficulty. This limitation could potentially be improved by the compliance of continuum manipulators. To achieve this goal, we present the novel design of a compact, lightweight, and modular cable-driven continuum manipulator for aerial drones. We then derive a complete modeling framework for its kinematics, statics, and stiffness (compliance). The modeling framework can guide the control and design problems to integrate the manipu…
