Equilibrium-Based Force and Torque Control for an Aerial Manipulator to Interact with a Vertical Surface

Abstract

SUMMARYIn this paper, a force and torque controller for aerial manipulation is developed using an unmanned aerial vehicle equipped with a robotic arm to interact near or on a vertical surface such as a wall. Control of aerial manipulators interacting with the environment is a challenging task due to dynamic interactions between aerial vehicles, robotic arms, and environment. To achieve this, modeling of aerial manipulators is first investigated and presented considering interaction with the environment. Nonlinear models of generic aerial manipulators, as well as of a prototype aerial manipulator composed of a hexacopter with a three-joint robotic arm, are established. An equilibrium-based force and torque controller is developed to conduct tasks that require the aerial manipulator to exert forces and torques on a wall. Simulations and experiments validate the performance of the controller that successfully applies desired forces and torques to an object fixed on a wall while flying near the wall.

Kinetostatics of a serial robot in screw form

“…This method is widely used in different fields. [13][14][15][16] The second method is the force Jacobian matrix approach based on the D-H convention. In a Cartesian coordinate system, work is the dot product of the force vector and displacement vector.…”

Autonomous control design of an unmanned aerial manipulator for contact inspection

“…In recent years, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) especially rotary-wing unmanned aerial manipulators (UAM) in aerial inspections has shown a significant increase, which made the great breakthroughs and progress. UAM consisting of an UAV and active operating mechanism can complete some simple tasks currently, such as grasping [1,2], sampling [3], transportation [4][5][6], contact inspection [7][8][9] and sensor installation [10]. In addition, UAM has great potential applications in inspection tasks such as large-scale infrastructure inspections that are difficult for humans to reach.…”