Development of a Pneumatically-Driven Aerial Manipulator
Ryusei SAKAMOTO, Daisuke Haraguchi · The Proceedings of JSME annual Conference on Robotics and Mechatronics (Robomec) · 2023
This paper reports on the development of an aerial manipulator equipped with pneumatic actuators. By using pneumatic actuators, it is possible to fabricate a lightweight, high-power manipulator with excellent shock resistance and environmental resistance. As a prototype of aerial manipulator, a pneumatically-driven 3-DOF manipulator was designed, fabricated, and mounted on a small quad drone with a wheelbase of 450 mm. The manipulator weighs approximately 610 g, and the total weight of the aerial manipulator is approximately 1.7 kg. Ground experiments of the manipulator are successfully conducted including a 0.5 kg payload operation test and a 200 mm square-drawing test with a marker pen. In the flight experiments, the drawing manipulation test were conducted with a manual attitude control of the drone, which clarifies some technical issues for the aerial manipulator.