Mechanical Design, Modelling and Control of a Novel Aerial Manipulator

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.Comment: Comments: 8 Pages, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA '15), Seattle, WA, US

Shared-Control for a UAV Operating in the 3D Space

This paper presents a shared-control scheme for a UAV moving in a 3D space while its feasible Cartesian position set is defined by a group of linear inequalities. A hysteresis switch is used to combine the human input and the feedback control input based on the definitions of a safe set, a hysteresis set and a “dangerous” set. Case studies given in the paper show the effectiveness of the shared-control algorithm