Abstract
This paper presents a novel method for motion planning of aerial long-reach manipulators that considers the aerodynamic effects generated by close surfaces in the trajectory generation process. The aerial manipulation system consists of a multirotor equipped with a robotic long-reach arm that enables multidirectional inspection and also increases considerably the safety distance between the rotors and the inspected elements. Since these systems operate in the proximity of elements that can modify significantly the rotors’ airflow, the inclusion of Aerodynamics Awareness within the motion planning process is required to ensure robust obstacle avoidance. To this end, a proper characterisation of the aerodynamic effects based on both theoretical and experimental considerations has been derived. This characterisation is taken into account in the trajectory generation process to discard states whose associated aerodynamic phenomena are not well compensated by the system controller and to explore alternatives that lead to the most efficient trajectories within the area of safe operation. Moreover, the motion planner also stands out for three other relevant features: the joint consideration of the multirotor and the robotic long-reach arm, the generation of efficient trajectories in terms of energy consumption, and the Dynamics Awareness of the strong coupling between the aerial platform and the robotic arm. The resulting motion planner has been successfully tested in a simulated environment that faithfully reflects an application scenario strongly affected by aerodynamic effects: the inspection of bridges to find potential cracks in the surface of pillars.
Highlights
Among the numerous applications in which Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can be used, aerial manipulation is arousing much interest
Since the controlled Aerial Robotic System for Long-Reach Manipulation (ARS-LRM) system is commanded to navigate close to the bottom surface of the bridge deck, this implies flying in the presence of the associated ceiling effect
The corresponding video animation can be found in [28]. In this case the planner takes into account the dynamics of the system within the planning process, the disturbances associated with the ceiling effect lead again the ARS-LRM system to collide with the bridge deck in the closed-loop simulation
Summary
Among the numerous applications in which Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can be used, aerial manipulation is arousing much interest. The authors of this paper presented an extension of [9] in [10] to include Dynamics Awareness within the operation of the planner for robust obstacle avoidance To this end, the expansion of the search tree is based on closed-loop simulations of the controlled aerial manipulator instead of using geometrical interpolations. After the presentation of the complete system as well as the motivating scenario, Section 6 includes several closed-loop simulations of the controlled ARS-LRM system when following the planned trajectories given by the different motion planning algorithms that have been considered in this paper The latter illustrates how the motion planner with Aerodynamics Awareness outperforms the results obtained with algorithms that do not include this feature.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
