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.
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 …
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）
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…
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）
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）
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…
Indian Institute of Science（印度科学学院）；Robert Bosch Center for Cyber Physical Systems（罗伯特·博世网络物理系统中心）
In this paper, we present a novel passive single Degree-of-Freedom (DoF) manipulator design and its integration on an autonomous drone to capture a moving target. The end-effector is designed to be passive, to disengage the moving target from a flying UAV and capture it efficiently in the presence of disturbances, with minimal energy usage. It is also designed to handle target sway and the effect of downwash. The passive manipulator is integrated with the drone through a single Degree of Freedom (DoF) arm, and experiments are carried out in an outdoor environment. The rack-and-pinion mechanism…
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…
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）
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…
An Aerial Manipulator for Perception-Driven Flower Targeting Toward Contactless Pollination in Vertical Farming
Department of Computer Science University College London London United Kingdom（计算机科学系伦敦大学学院伦敦英国）；Department of Artificial Intelligence University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur Malaysia（人工智能系马来大学吉隆坡马来西亚）；University College London（伦敦大学学院）；University of Malaya（马来大学）
Saratoga High School（萨拉托加高中）；University of Michigan（密歇根大学）
We propose a mechanically simple and cheap design for a series elastic actuator with controllable stiffness. Such characteristics are necessary for animals for running, jumping, throwing, and manipulation, yet in robots, variable stiffness actuators are either complicated or mimicked at low bandwidth through feedback controllers. A robust and simple design is needed to build reliable and cheap robots with animal capabilities. The key insight of our design is attaching torsional springs to timing belts to create a variable stiffness linear spring. In an antagonistic pair, varying the distance b…
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）
Indian Institute of Science（印度科学学院）；Tata Consultancy Services（塔塔咨询服务公司）
Aerial transportation requires a simple yet reliable gripper for picking and placing objects of interest. In this work, we design an aerial gripper for passive grasping and impulsive release of ferrous coated objects. Permanent magnets are used for passive grasping and the Scotch Yoke mechanism is used for providing impulsive force to drop the object. The load carrying capacity of the gripper is calculated theoretically and experimentally. The parameters such as the radius of the rotating disk and length of the slider in the Scotch Yoke mechanism were optimized using weighted geometric program…
Exploiting contacts with environment structures provides extra force support to a UAV, often reducing the power consumption and hence extending the mission time. This paper investigates one such way to exploit flat surfaces in the environment by a novel aerial-ground hybrid locomotion. Our design is a single passive wheel integrated at the UAV bottom, serving a minimal design to date. We present the principle and implementation of such a simple design as well as its control. Flight experiments are conducted to verify the feasibility and the power saving caused by the ground locomotion. Results…
An Experimental Study of Downwash Effects on a Continuum Manipulator Integrated with a Multirotor UAV
Queensland University of Technology (QUT)（昆士兰科技大学）；QUT Centre for Robotics（昆士兰科技大学机器人中心）；Research Engineering Facility (REF)（研究工程设施）；School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics（电气工程与机器人学院）
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）
FlyAware: Inertia-Aware Aerial Manipulation via Vision-Based Estimation and Post-Grasp Adaptation
School of Intelligent Systems Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University（中山大学智能系统工程学院）；Visual Intelligence Lab, Cheng Kar-Shun Robotics Institute, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology（香港科技大学成卡顺机器人研究所视觉智能实验室）；Differential Robotics Technology Company, Ltd.（差分机器人技术有限公司）
In this paper, we present the design, simulation and experimental validation of a control architecture for a flying hand, i.e., a system made of an unmanned aerial vehicle, a robotic manipulator and a gripper, which is grasping an object fixed on a vertical wall. The goal of this work is to show that the overall control allows the flying hand to approach the wall, to dock on the object by means of the gripper, take the object and fly away. The control strategy has been implemented and validated in the simulated model and in experiments on the complete flying hand system.
Czech Technical University in Prague（布拉格捷克理工大学）；New York University（纽约大学）；University of Pennsylvania（宾夕法尼亚大学）
Mobile manipulators have the potential to revolutionize modern agriculture, logistics and manufacturing. In this work, we present the design of a ground-based mobile manipulator for automated structure assembly. The proposed system is capable of autonomous localization, grasping, transportation and deployment of construction material in a semi-structured environment. Special effort was put into making the system invariant to lighting changes, and not reliant on external positioning systems. Therefore, the presented system is self-contained and capable of operating in outdoor and indoor conditi…
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
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 …
Indian Institute of Science（印度科学学院）；Robert Bosch Center for Cyber-Physical Systems（罗伯特·博世网络物理系统中心）
Selective interception of objects in unknown environment autonomously by UAVs is an interesting problem. In this work, vision based interception is carried out. This problem is a part of challenge 1 of Mohammed Bin Zayed International Robotic Challenge, 2020, where, balloons are kept at five random locations for the UAVs to autonomously explore, detect, approach and intercept. The problem requires a different formulation to execute compared to the normal interception problems in literature. This work details the different aspect of this problem from vision to manipulator design. The frame work…
A Manipulator-Assisted Multiple UAV Landing System for USV Subject to Disturbance
Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society（深圳市人工智能与机器人研究院）；The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen（香港中文大学（深圳））；Maastricht University（马斯特里赫特大学）
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…
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）
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）
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…
Ecole des Mines de Nantes（南特矿业学院）；Institut de Recherches en Communications et en Cybernetique de Nantes（南特通信与控制研究所）
The paper presents a methodology to enhance the stiffness analysis of serial and parallel manipulators with passive joints. It directly takes into account the loading influence on the manipulator configuration and, consequently, on its Jacobians and Hessians. The main contributions of this paper are the introduction of a non-linear stiffness model for the manipulators with passive joints, a relevant numerical technique for its linearization and computing of the Cartesian stiffness matrix which allows rank-deficiency. Within the developed technique, the manipulator elements are presented as pse…
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 …
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）
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）
