[en] The proximity between the multirotor blades and the environmental obstacles restricts the application of aerial manipulators in inspection tasks due to the risk of impacts, the limitation in the reach of the arm, and the physical interactions. This paper presents a long reach aerial manipulator consisting of a hexarotor platform equipped with a 2-DOF compliant joint arm attached at the tip of a one-meter-length link in passive pendulum configuration. The arm integrates magnetic encoders for force/torque estimation-control based on joint deflection, a range sensor in the forearm link for measuring the distance to the contact point, and a camera for visual inspection. A 2-DOF wearable exoskeleton interface has been developed, allowing the teleoperation of the arm with visual feedback in a more intuitive way. The paper also covers the kinematics and dynamics of the aerial manipulator, including the dynamics of the flexible long reach link. The developed system has been evaluated in test-bench and in outdoor flight tests.
Disciplines :
Mechanical engineering
Author, co-author :
Suarez, Alejandro
Sanchez Cuevas, Pedro Jesus ; University of Luxembourg > Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SNT) > Space Robotics
Fernandez, Manuel
Perez, Manuel
Heredia, Guillermo
Ollero, Anibal
External co-authors :
yes
Language :
English
Title :
Lightweight and Compliant Long Reach Aerial Manipulator for Inspection Operations
Publication date :
01 October 2018
Event name :
2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
Event date :
from 1-10-2018 to 5-10-2018
Journal title :
2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
