Design and implementation of rotor aerial manipulator system

Abstract

With the development of rotor aerial robot, it has been widely used as a stabilized flying platform to achieve observation, communication relay and so on by equipping corresponding equipment, which are always called passive tasks. However, many applications need rotor aerial robots to possess more active capability, such as grasp, carry and assemblage. Thus, the demand for an aerial manipulation system gradually appears, and becomes a hot research issue in recent years. Aerial manipulator system, usually composed of rotor aerial robot and the manipulator, is a new type of robot system with active operating capability. Compared with the mobile manipulator based on the ground and underwater mobile robot which is now widely applied, the aerial manipulation has lager working range and better flexibility obviously. Unfortunately, the new aerial manipulation system also brings new challenges, such as strong dynamics coupling, the modeling and stabilization problem, etc. which may affect its further application. Thus, in our work, an actual physical aerial manipulator system is designed and implemented for its system and application research. Based on the system, the preliminary modeling and control was researched and also an experiment for grasping and carry application is conducted. The conclusions of these researches will help us to realize and improve the system in the future.