Dynamic modeling and control for aerial arm-operating of a multi-propeller multifunction aerial robot

Development of an Anthropomorphic and Dexterous Dual-Arm System for Aerial Cooperative Bimanual Manipulation

It is a challenging task for an aerial manipulator to complete dual-arm cooperative manipulation in an outdoor environment. In this study, a new dual-arm aerial manipulator system with flexible operation is developed. The dual-arm manipulator system is designed for the application of aerial manipulation, and it has the characteristics of low weight, low inertia, and a humanoid arm structure. The arm structure is composed of customized aluminum parts, each manipulator contains four degrees of freedom, similar to the arrangement of human joints, including shoulder yaw, shoulder pitch, elbow pitch, and wrist roll. Next, the workspace of the dual-arm manipulator is simulated and analyzed, and the relevant kinematic and dynamic models are deduced. Finally, through the lift load, accuracy and repeatability, cooperative bimanual manipulation tests on the test bench, and multiple groups of outdoor flight tests, the relevant performance analysis and verification of the dual-arm aerial manipulator system are carried out. The test results evaluate the feasibility of the designed dual-arm aerial manipulator system for outdoor cooperative manipulation.

Motion planning with dynamics awareness for long reach manipulation in aerial robotic systems with two arms

Human activities in maintenance of industrial plants pose elevated risks as well as significant costs due to the required shutdowns of the facility. An aerial robotic system with two arms for long reach manipulation in cluttered environments is presented to alleviate these constraints. The system consists of a multirotor with a long bar extension that incorporates a lightweight dual arm in the tip. This configuration allows aerial manipulation tasks even in hard-to-reach places. The objective of this work is the development of planning strategies to move the aerial robotic system with two arms for long reach manipulation in a safe and efficient way for both navigation and manipulation tasks. The motion planning problem is addressed considering jointly the aerial platform and the dual arm in order to achieve wider operating conditions. Since there exists a strong dynamical coupling between the multirotor and the dual arm, safety in obstacle avoidance will be assured by introducing dynamics awareness in the operation of the planner. On the other hand, the limited maneuverability of the system emphasizes the importance of energy and time efficiency in the generated trajectories. Accordingly, an adapted version of the optimal Rapidly-exploring Random Tree algorithm has been employed to guarantee their optimality. The resulting motion planning strategy has been evaluated through simulation in two realistic industrial scenarios, a riveting application and a chimney repairing task. To this end, the dynamics of the aerial robotic system with two arms for long reach manipulation has been properly modeled, and a distributed control scheme has been derived to complete the test bed. The satisfactory results of the simulations are presented as a first validation of the proposed approach.