Aerial Manipulation while in Contact with the Environment by Multilinked Aerial Robot with Thrust Vectoring Module
Nobuki Sugito, Moju Zhao, Tomoki Anzai, Takuzumi Nishio, Kei Okada, Masayuki Inaba · The Proceedings of JSME annual Conference on Robotics and Mechatronics (Robomec) · 2021
In order to manipulate objects using aerial robots, conventional way using quadcopter with a robotic arm has two problems; Underactuation and Weak manipulation force. To solve underactuation, 1-DoF thrust vectoring mechanism is attached to each propeller and enables fully-actuated flight control. Flight control uses online non-linear optimization which takes thrust forces and vectoring angles as inputs. To increase manipulation force, this paper proposes whole-body manipulation by multilinked robot taking advantage of environmental adherence. Motion planning for manipulation which includes contact-detection, mode transition, end-effector position control was proposed. The robot successfully opened the door in real machine experiment, and showed its ability to manipulate large objects.