Image‐Based Control for Aerial Manipulation

Abstract

This paper presents a new image-based servo control scheme that endows an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with a robotic arm with the capability of automatically positioning elements on target objects. Through a new formalism, the proposed visual servo scheme controls both the UAV and the manipulator simultaneously. It takes into account the whole system redundancy as well as the peculiarity of under-actuation related to rotary-wing crafts. While it controls the system at the velocity level, it makes use of the mobility afforded by the UAV and the dexterity inherent to robot manipulators. The case of large initial errors is explicitly addressed. Results of simulations are reported to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Image-based control for dynamically cross-coupled aerial manipulation

“…1, the manipulator actuates an assembly part that needs to be positioned on a visual target automatically. To achieve this, we propose in [16] an image-based servo scheme that simultaneously controls the UAV and the manipulator at the velocity level, such that a novel feedback error is proposed. Let the target and the assembly part be characterised by a set of m 3D points each.…”

“…the rate of the UAV attitude (roll and pitch) expressed in the camera frame. To nullify e, and thence automatically position the assembly part on the visual target, we can use [16] ξ := J + (Lωω − λ e) + (I n+4 − J + J)ξ N ,…”

“…Note in addition that with this new definition there is no need to learn the desired image features. Since only four DoFs of the quadrotor can be servoed, we expressė as a function of a new system generalised-velocityξ as follows [16] 2 :…”

“…In fact it allows exploiting the dexterity of the manipulator only when close to the target. Details on the design of W can be found in [16].…”

Dynamic Stability and Control of a Manipulating Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

“…Earlier studies focused on the installation of a lightweight gripper at the belly of the aircraft [3][4][5]. The gripper has less impact on the UAV, but the operating ability is very limited, so the later research mainly focused on changing the gripper device into a manipulator [6][7][8][9]. Manipulator, especially redundant manipulator, has flexible operation [10,11].…”