Design and Control of a Variable Aerial Cable Towed System
École Centrale de Nantes (ECN)（南特中央理工学院）；Laboratoire des Sciences du Numérique de Nantes (LS2N)（南特数字科学实验室）；Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)（法国国家科学研究中心）
Aerial Cable Towed Systems (ACTS) are composed of several Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) connected to a payload by cables. Compared to towing objects from individual aerial vehicles, an ACTS has significant advantages such as heavier payload capacity, modularity, and full control of the payload pose. They are however generally large with limited ability to meet geometric constraints while avoiding collisions between UAVs. This paper presents the modelling, performance analysis, design, and a proposed controller for a novel ACTS with variable cable lengths, named Variable Aerial Cable Towed System (VACTS).Winches are embedded on the UAVs for actuating the cable lengths similar to a Cable-Driven Parallel Robot to increase the versatility of the ACTS. The general geometric, kinematic and dynamic models of the VACTS are derived, followed by the development of a centralized feedback linearization controller. The design is based on a wrench analysis of the VACTS, without constraining the cables to pass through the UAV center of mass, as in current works. Additionally, the performance of the VACTS and ACTS are compared showing that the added versatility comes at the cost of payload and configuration flexibility. A prototype confirms the feasibility of the system.
A Cooperative Aerial System of A Payload Drone Equipped with Dexterous Rappelling End Droid for Cluttered Space Pickup
School of Aerospace Science and Engineering, Beihang University（北京航空航天大学航空航天科学与工程学院）；Hangzhou International Innovation Institute of Beihang University（北京航空航天大学杭州国际创新研究院）；Institute of Unmanned System, Beihang University（北京航空航天大学无人系统研究院）；Tianmushan Laboratory（天门山实验室）
University of California, Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校）；Meta AI Research（Meta人工智能研究院）
This paper tackles the problem of robots collaboratively towing a load with cables to a specified goal location while avoiding collisions in real time. The introduction of cables (as opposed to rigid links) enables the robotic team to travel through narrow spaces by changing its intrinsic dimensions through slack/taut switches of the cable. However, this is a challenging problem because of the hybrid mode switches and the dynamical coupling among multiple robots and the load. Previous attempts at addressing such a problem were performed offline and do not consider avoiding obstacles online. In…
Aerial Transportation Control of Suspended Payloads with Multiple Agents
Center for Research in Mathematics CIMAT AC（数学研究中心CIMAT AC）；Investigadores CONACYT at Center for Research in Mathematics CIMAT AC（墨西哥国家科学技术委员会研究员（任职于数学研究中心CIMAT AC））；Sorbonne Universitès（索邦大学）；Université de Technologie de Compiègne（贡比涅技术大学）；CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）；Heudiasyc UMR 7253（赫迪亚西实验室UMR 7253）
Trajectory Optimization for Self-Wrap-Aware Cable-Towed Planar Object Manipulation under Implicit Tension Constraints
Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence, Technical University of Munich, Germany（慕尼黑机器人与机器智能研究所，慕尼黑技术大学，德国）；Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stony Brook University（石溪大学机械工程系）
Transporting objects using aerial robots has been widely studied in the literature. Still, those approaches always assume that the connection between the quadrotor and the load is made in a previous stage. However, that previous stage usually requires human intervention, and autonomous procedures to locate and attach the object are not considered. Additionally, most of the approaches assume cables as rigid links, but manipulating cables requires considering the state when the cables are hanging. In this work, we design and control a catenary robot. Our robot is able to transport hook-shaped ob…
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…
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）
Payload trajectory tracking control for aerial transportation systems with cable length online optimization
Institute of Robotics and Automatic Information System, College of Artificial Intelligence（机器人与自动化信息系统研究所，人工智能学院）；Tianjin Key Laboratory of Intelligent Robotics, Nankai University（天津智能机器人重点实验室，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）
Integration of a Variable Stiffness Link for Long-Reach Aerial Manipulation
Department of Electrical and Photonics Engineering Control, Robotics and Embodied AI, Technical University of Denmark（技术大学丹麦分校电气与光子工程系）；GRVC Robotics Laboratory, Universidad de Sevilla（塞维利亚大学GRVC机器人实验室）
Nonlinear Predictive Control of the Continuum and Hybrid Dynamics of a Suspended Deformable Cable for Aerial Pick and Place
Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome（计算机、控制与管理工程系，罗马萨皮恩扎大学）；Robotics and Mechatronics Department, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer Science (EEMCS) Faculty, University of Twente（机器人与机电系，电气工程、数学与计算机科学（EEMCS） faculty，特文特大学）
Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, Georgia Tech（佐治亚理工学院机器人与智能机器研究所）；CNRS IRL 2958, Georgia Tech Lorraine（法国国家科学研究中心2958国际联合实验室，佐治亚理工洛林分校）；School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Tech（佐治亚理工学院土木与环境工程学院）
We propose a novel hybrid cable-based robot with manipulator and camera for high-accuracy, medium-throughput plant monitoring in a vertical hydroponic farm and, as an example application, demonstrate non-destructive plant mass estimation. Plant monitoring with high temporal and spatial resolution is important to both farmers and researchers to detect anomalies and develop predictive models for plant growth. The availability of high-quality, off-the-shelf structure-from-motion (SfM) and photogrammetry packages has enabled a vibrant community of roboticists to apply computer vision for non-destr…
This paper is concerned with learning transferable contact models for aerial manipulation tasks. We investigate a contact-based approach for enabling unmanned aerial vehicles with cable-suspended passive grippers to compute the attach points on novel payloads for aerial transportation. This is the first time that the problem of autonomously generating contact points for such tasks has been investigated. Our approach builds on the underpinning idea that we can learn a probability density of contacts over objects' surfaces from a single demonstration. We enhance this formulation for encoding aer…
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…
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…
Agile and Cooperative Aerial Manipulation of a Cable-Suspended Load
Delft University of Technology（代尔夫特理工大学）；Sorbonne Université（索邦大学）；University of Twente（埃因霍温理工大学）；Sapienza University of Rome（罗马萨皮恩扎大学）；Univ Rennes, CNRS, Inria, IRISA, France（里昂大学，CNRS，Inria，IRISA，法国）
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are reaching offshore. In this work, we formulate the novel problem of a marine locomotive quadrotor UAV, which manipulates the surge velocity of a floating buoy by means of a cable. The proposed robotic system can have a variety of novel applications for UAVs where their high speed and maneuverability, as well as their ease of deployment and wide field of vision, give them a superior advantage. In addition, the major limitation of limited flight time of quadrotor UAVs is typically addressed through an umbilical power cable, which naturally integrates with the p…
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…
Hierarchical Whole-body Control of the cable-Suspended Aerial Manipulator endowed with Winch-based Actuation
German Aerospace Center (DLR)（德国航空航天中心（DLR））；University of Twente（特文特大学）；Dextrous Robotics Inc.（灵巧机器人公司）；Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica（航空技术研究所）；Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)（韩国科学技术院（KAIST））；TU Wien（维也纳工业大学）
PolyFly: Polytopic Optimal Planning for Collision-Free Cable-Suspended Aerial Payload Transportation
University of California Berkeley, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences（加州大学伯克利分校电子工程与计算机科学系）；Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Robotics Engineering（沃思黑德技术学院机器人工程）
A quadcopter is an under-actuated system with only four control inputs for six degrees of freedom, and yet the human control of a quadcopter is simple enough to be learned with some practice. In this work, we consider the problem of human control of a multiple quadcopters system to transport a cable-suspended payload. The coupled dynamics of the system, due to the inherent physical constraints, is used to develop a leader-follower architecture where the leader quadcopter is controlled directly by a human operator and the followers are controlled with the proposed Payload Attitude Controller an…
California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院）；ETH Zurich（苏黎世联邦理工学院）；Northeastern University（东北大学）
The feasibility of performing airborne and ground manipulation, perception, and reconnaissance using wheeled rovers, unmanned aerial vehicles, CubeSats, SmallSats and more have been evaluated before. Among all of these solutions, balloon-based systems possess merits that make them extremely attractive, e.g., a simple operation mechanism and endured operation time. However, there are many hurdles to overcome to achieve robust loitering performance in balloon-based applications. We attempt to identify design and control challenges, and propose a novel robotic platform that allows for the applica…
Observability Analysis and Composite Disturbance Filtering for a Bar Tethered to Dual UAVs Subject to Multi-source Disturbances
School of Cyber Science and Technology, Beihang University（信息科学与技术学院，北航）；School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University（自动化科学与电气工程学院，北航）；Beijing Engineering Research Center of Industrial Spectrum Imaging（工业频谱成像北京工程研究中心）；School of Automation and Electrical Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing（自动化与电气工程学院，北京科技大学）；Hangzhou Innovation Institute, Beihang University（杭州创新研究院，北航）
Self-Organizing Aerial Swarm Robotics for Resilient Load Transportation : A Table-Mechanics-Inspired Approach
School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University（北京航空航天大学自动化科学与电气工程学院）；Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong（香港中文大学机械与自动化工程系）
This paper addresses the problem of cooperative transport of a point mass hoisted by two aerial robots. Treating the robots as a leader and a follower, the follower stabilizes the system with respect to the leader using only feedback from its Inertial Measurement Units (IMU). This is accomplished by neglecting the acceleration of the leader, analyzing the system through the generalized coordinates or the cables' angles, and employing an observation model based on the IMU measurements. A lightweight estimator based on an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and a controller are derived to stabilize the…
Partial Feedback Linearization Control of a Cable-Suspended Multirotor Platform for Stabilization of an Attached Load
Automation and Control Institute (ACIN), TU Wien（自动化与控制研究所（ACIN），维也纳技术大学）；Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, German Aerospace Center (DLR)（机器人与机电研究所，德国航空航天中心（DLR））
ETH Zurich（苏黎世联邦理工学院）；LAAS-CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心分析与系统架构实验室）；Université de Toulouse（图卢兹大学）；CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）；University of Naples Federico II（那不勒斯费德里科二世大学）
Today, physical Human-Robot Interaction (pHRI) is a very popular topic in the field of ground manipulation. At the same time, Aerial Physical Interaction (APhI) is also developing very fast. Nevertheless, pHRI with aerial vehicles has not been addressed so far. In this work, we present the study of one of the first systems in which a human is physically connected to an aerial vehicle by a cable. We want the robot to be able to pull the human toward a desired position (or along a path) only using forces as an indirect communication-channel. We propose an admittance-based approach that makes pHR…
