Abbaraju Praveen, Haoguang Yang, Hyukjun Jang, Richard M Voyles
Abstract
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 external wind disturbances are presented. Preliminary simulation results on end-point tracking in a simple planar on-board manipulator case is presented.