Design of a lightweight dual arm system for aerial manipulation

Abstract

This paper presents the development and experimental validation of a low weight and inertia, human-size and highly dexterous dual arm system designed for aerial manipulation with multirotor platform. The arms, weighting 1.8 kg in total and with a maximum lift load per arm around 0.75 kg, provide five degrees of freedom (DOF) for end-effector positioning and wrist orientation. A customized aluminium frame structure supports the servo actuators, placing most part of the mass close to the shoulder structure in order to reduce the inertia. A double flange bearing mechanism in side-by-side configuration isolates the servos from impacts and radial/axial overloads, increasing robustness. This is important to prevent that the arms are damaged during physical interactions with the environment, as they should support the kinetic energy of the whole platform. The motivation in the development of a dual arm aerial manipulator is extending the range of applications and tasks that can be performed with respect to the single arm case, like grasping large objects or assembling. The paper covers the kinematic and dynamic modelling of the aerial robot, proposing a control scheme that deals with the technological limitations of the smart servo actuators. The performance of the arms and the interactions with the aerial platform are evaluated in test bench experiments. The proposed dual arm design is validated through outdoor flight tests with two commercial hexarotor platforms equipped with standard industrial autopilots.

Limitations of wireless power transfer technologies for mobile robots

“…The Matrice 600 Pro 2 represents the large class of UAV with payload capability. This allows different sensors or manipulators to be mounted to it, allowing for a larger array of tasks to be undertaken [4,18,19].…”

Flexible link long reach manipulator with lightweight dual arm: Soft-collision detection, reaction, and obstacle localization

“…The mechanical specifications are summarized in Table 1. The dual arm, described in more detail in [23], is designed for aerial manipulation with multirotors, so special attention has been paid in reducing as much as possible the total mass and inertia. For that reason most part of the mass, which corresponds to the servos, is placed close to the shoulder structure.…”

“…This work considers a dual arm manipulator since there are a wide variety of operations that cannot be handled by a single arm, such as grasping large objects, transportation or retrieval of two sensors, eye-in-hand camera operation, or operating one arm while the other is grabbed at a fixed point. Unlike space manipulators [13] [14], the lightweight dual arm considered in this work has been specifically designed for its integration in multi-rotor vehicles and tested on flight [23]. The rest of the paper is organized as follows.…”

Exponential stability of dual flexible arms for grasping and orientation control

“…Thus, grasping an object by flexible arms keeps the above benefits and is safer for the grasped object than the rigid arm, because the flexible arm has intrinsic large compliance compared to the rigid arm [4]. These advantages lead to many applications including a surgical instrument like flexible beams for grasping task in minimally invasive surgery [5], a flexible dual-arm space robot for capturing space debris [6], and a grasping task in the food manufacturing industry [7] and the aerial manipulation field [8].…”