The design, modeling and control of a 5 degreesof-freedom light-weight robot manipulator is presented in this paper. The proposed robot arm, named Prisma Ultra-Lightweight 5 ARm (PUL5AR), is employed to execute manipulation tasks equipped on board of a vertical take-off and landing unmanned aerial vehicle. The arm is compact and light-weight. Its mechanics is designed such that it can fold on itself during landing manoeuvres. Moreover, the design is conceived to constrain the center of gravity of the arm as close as possible to vehicle base, thus reducing the total inertia and static unbalancing of the system. Experimental tests have been carried out in order to validate the dynamic model, the communication library, the developed electronics, and the control schemes implemented for the designed robot arm.Index Terms-Aerial manipulation, light-weight robot arm, robot arm design.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.