3 research outputs found
Versatile Multilinked Aerial Robot with Tilting Propellers: Design, Modeling, Control and State Estimation for Autonomous Flight and Manipulation
Multilinked aerial robot is one of the state-of-the-art works in aerial
robotics, which demonstrates the deformability benefiting both maneuvering and
manipulation. However, the performance in outdoor physical world has not yet
been evaluated because of the weakness in the controllability and the lack of
the state estimation for autonomous flight. Thus we adopt tilting propellers to
enhance the controllability. The related design, modeling and control method
are developed in this work to enable the stable hovering and deformation.
Furthermore, the state estimation which involves the time synchronization
between sensors and the multilinked kinematics is also presented in this work
to enable the fully autonomous flight in the outdoor environment. Various
autonomous outdoor experiments, including the fast maneuvering for interception
with target, object grasping for delivery, and blanket manipulation for
firefighting are performed to evaluate the feasibility and versatility of the
proposed robot platform. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study
for the multilinked aerial robot to achieve the fully autonomous flight and the
manipulation task in outdoor environment. We also applied our platform in all
challenges of the 2020 Mohammed Bin Zayed International Robotics Competition,
and ranked third place in Challenge 1 and sixth place in Challenge 3
internationally, demonstrating the reliable flight performance in the fields
On Aerial Robots with Grasping and Perching Capabilities: A Comprehensive Review
Over the last decade, there has been an increased interest in developing aerial robotic platforms that exhibit grasping and perching capabilities not only within the research community but also in companies across different industry sectors. Aerial robots range from standard multicopter vehicles/drones, to autonomous helicopters, and fixed-wing or hybrid devices. Such devices rely on a range of different solutions for achieving grasping and perching. These solutions can be classified as: 1) simple gripper systems, 2) arm-gripper systems, 3) tethered gripping mechanisms, 4) reconfigurable robot frames, 5) adhesion solutions, and 6) embedment solutions. Grasping and perching are two crucial capabilities that allow aerial robots to interact with the environment and execute a plethora of complex tasks, facilitating new applications that range from autonomous package delivery and search and rescue to autonomous inspection of dangerous or remote environments. In this review paper, we present the state-of-the-art in aerial grasping and perching mechanisms and we provide a comprehensive comparison of their characteristics. Furthermore, we analyze these mechanisms by comparing the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed technologies and we summarize the significant achievements in these two research topics. Finally, we conclude the review by suggesting a series of potential future research directions that we believe that are promising