Design and Implementation of a Novel Aerial Manipulator with Tandem Ducted Fans

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel aerial manipulator with tandem ducted fans, which takes both trafficability and effective loading into account. The aerial manipulator is particularly suitable for grasping in complex and narrow environment, in which traditional multi-rotor and helicopter would be inaccessible. The comprehensive integrated dynamic model is established by taking the aerial vehicle dynamics and manipulator dynamics as a whole. On this basis, a multilayer composite controller with feedforward compensation is designed, considering the mutual reactive influence between the aerial vehicle and the manipulator to improve the stability of the system under the motion of the manipulator. The simulation and actual flight tests verify the effectiveness of the design and show good stability and tracking performance of the system.