An Adaptive-Compliance Manipulator for Contact-Based Aerial Applications

Abstract

This paper presents simulation and airborne test results for a quadrotor equipped with an actively-variable compliance manipulator for contact interaction. Typical applications of this type of manipulator might include sensor placement operations and non-destructive testing. It is shown that through the use of the proposed manipulator, the force experienced at the end-effector can be adaptively controlled, and the effect of interactions on the aircraft itself minimised. Simulation and airborne results show a consistent correlation between the peak loads experienced at the end-effector and the actuator gains. A lightweight, adaptively-compliant actuator of this type offers the opportunity not only to tailor different demanded forces at the end-effector, but also to shape the loads applied-effects which can be achieved by changing only the software structure and tuning of the actuator control system.

Survey on Aerial Manipulator: System, Modeling, and Control

“…31,32,68,[78][79][80][81][82] • Parallel or serial structure: University of Twente, 70,83,84 ETH Zurich, 85 Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Lab, 86 and University of Malaga 87 use parallel manipulators; others are mostly serial structures. 9,11,31,32,[78][79][80][81][82] • Revolute or prismatic joint: Prismatic joint manipulators are used by University of Bologna, 88 University of the West of England, 89 and University of Twente. 90,91 Other manipulators are with revolute joints.…”

Energy-Tank Based Force Control for 3D Contour Following

“…The proposed design consists of a single-DoF manipulator actuated by a prismatic joint. Amongst the improvements brought up from its previous version seen in [9] there is a more powerful on-board computer, i.e. Raspberry Pi 3 (1.4 GHz 64-bit quadcore ARM Cortex-A53 processor) with Wi-Fi connectivity and logging capabilities.…”

“…Likewise, compliance is also a key feature in aerial manipulation thanks to the several advantages that it brings to the aerial system as a whole. Some of these advantages are energy absorbance in case of collision [2], force estimation and obstacle detection [24], and improved in-flight stability thanks to the dampening of perturbations [9,10].…”

2D Contour Following with an Unmanned Aerial Manipulator: Towards Tactile-Based Aerial Navigation

“…These control approaches demonstrate force estimation and motion feedback at the end-effector, improving stable contact during aerial interaction [4]- [7]. In our previous work [8], [9], compliance was introduced in the aerial system in the form of a variable-gain controller for the manipulator, while keeping a standalone flight controller on the aerial platform. Results demonstrated that by adapting the manipulator control gains, the dynamic response of the system as a whole changed and different output forces were generated at the end-effector, allowing us to fine-tune the overall compliant behaviour.…”