Aerial service robotics: The AIRobots perspective

Abstract

This paper presents the main vision and research activities of the ongoing European project AIRobots (Innovative Aerial Service Robot for Remote Inspection by Contact, www.airobots.eu). The goal of AIRobots is to develop a new generation of aerial service robots capable of supporting human beings in all those activities that require the ability to interact actively and safely with environments not constrained on ground but, indeed, airborne. Besides presenting the main ideas and the research activities within the three-year project, the paper shows the first technological outcomes obtained during the first year and a half of activity.

Passivity-based control of VToL UAVs with a momentum-based estimator of external wrench and unmodeled dynamics

“…From passive tasks like inspection [1,2], surveillance and monitoring [3], remote sensing and so on, such aerial vehicles are now beginning to be employed in active tasks like grasping [4] and manipulation [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. This change of perspective requires the UAV to operate in changing and unstructured scenarios.…”

On autonomous and teleoperated aerial service robots

“…The manipulator was designed by the University of Twente as a part of the EU AIRobots project [59] for aerial inspection by contact. It has three actuated DOFs in the Cartesian space.…”

“…The goal of the AIRobots project is to develop a new generation of aerial service robots that are capable of supporting human beings in all activities which require the ability to interact actively and safely with the environment without being constrained on ground (http://airobots.ing.unibo.it). The step forward with respect to the "classical" field of aerial robotics is to realize aerial vehicles and a control framework that are able to accomplish a large variety of service applications, such as inspection of buildings and large infrastructures, sample picking, and aerial manipulation, autonomously and/or with the human in the control loop, [59]. A graphical sketch of the vision of AIRobots is shown in Fig.…”

“…Their deployment for complex tasks, such as power plant inspection by contact [59], in teleoperation setting, however, have posed peculiar challenges, such as workspace incompatibility between the master and the slave robots [71]. The research works in haptic teleoperation of aerial robots have, so far, focused on addressing stability and additional unique challenges attributed to aerial robots, [111], [22], [53].…”

“…However, recent technological advancement in the field of aerial robotics have shifted the focus of application to tasks that require active interaction with the environment, such as brushing, docking and sliding, power plant inspection by contact, aerial grasping, load transportation, and cooperative aerial assembling [59], [90], [87].…”