Autonomous aerial robot for high-speed search and intercept applications

In recent years, high-speed navigation and environment interaction in the context of aerial robotics has become a field of interest for several academic and industrial research studies. In particular, Search and Intercept (SaI) applications for aerial robots pose a compelling research area due to their potential usability in several environments. Nevertheless, SaI tasks involve a challenging development regarding sensory weight, onboard computation resources, actuation design, and algorithms for perception and control, among others. In this work, a fully autonomous aerial robot for high-speed object grasping has been proposed. As an additional subtask, our system is able to autonomously pierce balloons located in poles close to the surface. Our first contribution is the design of the aerial robot at an actuation and sensory level consisting of a novel gripper design with additional sensors enabling the robot to grasp objects at high speeds. The second contribution is a complete software framework consisting of perception, state estimation, motion planning, motion control, and mission control in order to rapidly and robustly perform the autonomous grasping mission. Our approach has been validated in a challenging international competition and has shown outstanding results, being able to autonomously search, follow, and grasp a moving object at 6 m/s in an outdoor environment.Agencia Estatal de InvestigaciónKhalifa Universit

Arquitectura de componentes interoperables para control de movimiento de robots aéreos

La complejidad de un sistema software de gran extensión aumenta a medida que se generan nuevos componentes. Estos sistemas deben ser flexibles y competentes, donde la comunicación entre procesos toma gran importancia en la ejecución. El framework Aerostack necesita de múltiples controladores para diferentes aplicaciones y plataformas aéreas. Se desarrolla en esta memoria una solución para este framework que permite disponer de múltiples métodos de control de movimiento de robots aéreos para ser aplicables con flexibilidad en la construcción de arquitecturas específicas.---ABSTRACT---The complexity of a large software system increases as new components are generated. These systems must be flexible and competent, where communication between processes takes great importance in execution. The Aerostack framework requires multiple controllers for different applications and aerial platforms. A solution for this framework is developed in this report, which allows multiple movement control methods for aerial robots to be applied with flexibility in the development of specific architectures

Arquitectura de componentes interoperables para control de movimiento de robots aéreos

La complejidad de un sistema software de gran extensión aumenta a medida que se generan nuevos componentes. Estos sistemas deben ser flexibles y competentes, donde la comunicación entre procesos toma gran importancia en la ejecución. El framework Aerostack necesita de múltiples controladores para diferentes aplicaciones y plataformas aéreas. Se desarrolla en esta memoria una solución para este framework que permite disponer de múltiples métodos de control de movimiento de robots aéreos para ser aplicables con flexibilidad en la construcción de arquitecturas específicas.---ABSTRACT---The complexity of a large software system increases as new components are generated. These systems must be flexible and competent, where communication between processes takes great importance in execution. The Aerostack framework requires multiple controllers for different applications and aerial platforms. A solution for this framework is developed in this report, which allows multiple movement control methods for aerial robots to be applied with flexibility in the development of specific architectures