A passivity-based decentralized approach for the bilateral teleoperation of a group of UAVs with switching topology

Abstract

Abstract-In this paper, a novel distributed control strategy for teleoperating a fleet of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is proposed. Using passivity based techniques, we allow the behavior of the UAVs to be as flexible as possible with arbitrary split and join decisions while guaranteeing stability of the system. Furthermore, the overall teleoperation system is also made passive and, therefore, characterized by a stable behavior both in free motion and when interacting with unknown passive obstacles. The performance of the system is validated through semi-experiments.

Measuring an operator's maneuverability performance in the haptic teleoperation of multiple robots

“…This feedback allows the human operator to directly perceive the 'inertia' of the UAVs expressed in (9). Furthermore, the haptic feedback will also inform, in an indirect way, about presence of obstacles.…”

“…In a related study [9], another bilateral teleoperation controller was described which promoted flexibility in UAV formations, by adjusting the connectivity between UAVs according to their immediate environments. In these studies, we focused on developing a bilateral teleoperation strategy that allowed multiple UAVs to be controlled more efficiently and robustly [8], [9].…”

On autonomous and teleoperated aerial service robots

“…To overcome the master workspace limitation, a car driving metaphor (rate control), i.e., a mapping of the position of the master to the velocity reference of the slave, has been adopted by several authors [47], [69], [94], [111], [22]. Such a mapping strategy is also extensively employed in the field of ground mobile robots [14], [54].…”

“…Recently, haptic teleoperation of aerial robots has been used for free-flight, obstacle avoidance, and target attraction tasks [48], [58], [10]. The proposed control frameworks include both admittance and impedance frameworks [36], [69], for single and multiple aerial robots [97], [22].…”

“…Their deployment for complex tasks, such as power plant inspection by contact [59], in teleoperation setting, however, have posed peculiar challenges, such as workspace incompatibility between the master and the slave robots [71]. The research works in haptic teleoperation of aerial robots have, so far, focused on addressing stability and additional unique challenges attributed to aerial robots, [111], [22], [53].…”