Autonomous aerial robotics for package delivery: A technical review

Abstract

Small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have gained significant interest in the last decade. More specifically these vehicles have the capacity to impact package delivery logistics in a disruptive way. This paper reviews research problems and state‐of‐the‐art solutions that facilitate package delivery. Different aerial manipulators and grippers are listed along with control techniques to address stability issues. Landing on a platform is next discussed which encompasses static and dynamic platforms. Landing on a dynamic platform presents further challenges. This includes delayed control responses and poor precision of the relative motion between the platform and the aerial vehicle. Subsequently, risks such as weather conditions, state estimation, and collision avoidance to ensure safe transit is considered. Finally, delivery UAV routing is investigated which categorizes the topic into two areas: drone operations and drone–truck collaborative operations. Additionally, we compare the solutions against design, environmental, and legal constraints.

Powerful UAV manipulation via bioinspired self-adaptive soft self-contained gripper

“…In the fields of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), aerial transportation and manipulation (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6) have drawn more attention because they notably extend the capabilities of UAVs (7), where UAV grasping plays a crucial role (8,9). Numerous studies on UAV grasping (10)(11)(12)(13)(14) have been reported to date, including rigid grippers designed to mimic avian claws (15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20), achieving grasping by establishing precise dynamic models of the entire system (19,21) or installing a series of sensors on the gripper (20).…”