Design Iterations for Passive Aerial Manipulator

2015 23rd Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation (MED), 2015

The design, modeling and control of a 5 degreesof-freedom lightweight robot manipulator is presented in this paper. The proposed robot arm, named Prisma Ultra-Lightweight 5 ARm (PUL5AR), is employed to execute manipulation tasks equipped on board of a vertical takeoff and landing unmanned aerial vehicle. The arm is compact and lightweight. Its mechanics is designed such that it can fold on itself during landing manoeuvres. Moreover, the design is conceived to constrain the center of gravity of the arm as close as possible to vehicle base, thus reducing the total inertia and static unbalancing of the system. Experimental tests have been carried out in order to validate the dynamic model, the communication library, the developed electronics, and the control schemes implemented for the designed robot arm.

Mechatronics, 2018

This paper presents the development and experimental validation of a low weight and inertia, human-size and highly dexterous dual arm system designed for aerial manipulation with multirotor platform. The arms, weighting 1.8 kg in total and with a maximum lift load per arm around 0.75 kg, provide five degrees of freedom (DOF) for end-effector positioning and wrist orientation. A customized aluminium frame structure supports the servo actuators, placing most part of the mass close to the shoulder structure in order to reduce the inertia. A double flange bearing mechanism in side-by-side configuration isolates the servos from impacts and radial/axial overloads, increasing robustness. This is important to prevent that the arms are damaged during physical interactions with the environment, as they should support the kinetic energy of the whole platform. The motivation in the development of a dual arm aerial manipulator is extending the range of applications and tasks that can be performed with respect to the single arm case, like grasping large objects or assembling. The paper covers the kinematic and dynamic modelling of the aerial robot, proposing a control scheme that deals with the technological limitations of the smart servo actuators. The performance of the arms and the interactions with the aerial platform are evaluated in test bench experiments. The proposed dual arm design is validated through outdoor flight tests with two commercial hexarotor platforms equipped with standard industrial autopilots.

ArXiv, 2020

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-actuated UAV is chosen to achieve dexterous aerial mobile manipulation, but is limited by the actuation range of the UAV. An on-board manipulator is employed to enhance the performance in terms of dexterity and precision at the end-effector. Experimental results on position keeping of the dexterous hexrotor by withstanding the disturbances caused by the motions of the on-board manipulator and exter...

2013 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2013

In this paper we describe a system for aerial manipulation composed of a helicopter platform and a fully actuated seven Degree of Freedom (DoF) redundant industrial robotic arm. We present the first analysis of such kind of systems and show that the dynamic coupling between helicopter and arm can generate diverging oscillations with very slow frequency which we called phase circles. Based on the presented analysis, we propose a control approach for the whole system. The partial decoupling between helicopter and arm -which eliminates the phase circles -is achieved by means of special movement of robotic arm utilizing its redundant DoF. For the underlying arm control a specially designed impedance controller was proposed. In different flight experiments we showcase that the proposed kind of system type might be used in the future for practically relevant tasks. In an integrated experiment we demonstrate a basic manipulation task -impedance based grasping of an object from the environment underlaying a visual object tracking control loop.

2017

The concept presented involves a combination of a quadcopter drone and an end-effector arm, which is designed with the capability of lifting and picking fruits from an elevated position. The inspiration for this concept was obtained from the swarm robots which have an effector arm to pick small cubes, cans to even collecting experimental samples as in case of space exploration. The system as per preliminary analysis would contain two physically separate components, but linked with a common algorithm which includes controlling of the drone’s positions along with the movement of the arm.

ROMANSY 23 - Robot Design, Dynamics and Control, 2020

This paper presents dynamic modelling, controller design and simulation results of a novel aerial robot dedicated to manipulation and grasping of large-size objects. This robot can be described as a flying hand composed of four fingers, four quadrotors and a body structure. The four quadrotors are arranged so as to allow the full actuation of the body structure in SE(3). This permits the system to maintain its position and attitude while closing the fingers despite external disturbances. The opening/closing motion of each finger is actuated by the yaw rotation of one quadrotor and transmitted through a non-backdrivable worm-gear mechanism so that the hand can produce secured grasps. We design a model predictive controller to deal with unknown mass, inertia and center of mass. The effectiveness of the controller and its robustness against external disturbances and noise are validated through several simulations using ADAMS-SIMULINK co-simulation.

Unmanned Systems, 2019

Aerial manipulation has direct application prospects in environment, construction, forestry, agriculture, search, and rescue. It can be used to pick and place objects and hence can be used for transportation of goods. Aerial manipulation can be used to perform operations in environments inaccessible or unsafe for human workers. This paper is a survey of recent research in aerial manipulation. The aerial manipulation research has diverse aspects, which include the designing of aerial manipulation platforms, manipulators, grippers, the control of aerial platform and manipulators, the interaction of aerial manipulator with the environment, through forces and torque. In particular, the review paper presents the survey of the airborne platforms that can be used for aerial manipulation including the new aerial platforms with aerial manipulation capability. We also classified the aerial grippers and aerial manipulators based on their designs and characteristics. The recent contributions re...

2011 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2011

This paper addresses mechanics, design, estimation and control for aerial grasping. We present the design of several lightweight , low-complexity grippers that allow quadrotors to grasp and perch on branches or beams and pick up and transport payloads. We then show how the robot can use rigid body dynamic models and sensing to verify a grasp, to estimate the the inertial parameters of the grasped object, and to adapt the controller and improve performance during flight. We present experimental results with different grippers and different payloads and show the robot's ability to estimate the mass, the location of the center of mass and the moments of inertia to improve tracking performance.

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.

IEEE Access

This paper presents an anthropomorphic, compliant and lightweight dual arm manipulator designed and developed for aerial manipulation applications with multi-rotor platforms. Each arm provides four degrees of freedom in a human-like kinematic configuration for end effector positioning: shoulder pitch, roll and yaw, and elbow pitch. The dual arm, weighting 1.3 kg in total, employs smart servo actuators and a customized and carefully designed aluminum frame structure manufactured by laser cut. The proposed design reduces the manufacturing cost as no computer numerical control machined part is used. Mechanical joint compliance is provided in all the joints, introducing a compact spring-lever transmission mechanism between the servo shaft and the links, integrating a potentiometer for measuring the deflection of the joints. The servo actuators are partially or fully isolated against impacts and overloads thanks to the flange bearings attached to the frame structure that support the rotation of the links and the deflection of the joints. This simple mechanism increases the robustness of the arms and safety in the physical interactions between the aerial robot and the environment. The developed manipulator has been validated through different experiments in fixed base test-bench and in outdoor flight tests.