Sensor Installation and Retrieval Operations Using an Unmanned Aerial Manipulator

Hamaza, Salua; Georgilas, Ioannis; Fernández, Manuel J.; Palos-Sánchez, Pedro R.; Richardson, Thomas; Heredia, Guillermo; Ollero, A.

doi:10.1109/lra.2019.2918448

Cited by 65 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 19 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The development of this technology is motivated by interest in reducing the time, cost and risk for human workers associated with the realization of certain tasks in high altitude or difficult access workspaces such as power lines [1,2], chemical plants [3], oil and gas refineries [4], and other infrastructures [5,6]. Recent works in this field have demonstrated the possibility to conduct operations such as object grasping [7][8][9], valve turning [10], sensor installation and retrieval [2,11], contactbased inspection [3,12,13], insulation of cracks and leaks [14], or the realization of other tasks with grippers and other tools [15,16]. Several prototypes and morphologies of manipulators have been specifically developed for their integration in multi-rotors, including multi-joint arms [17,18], dual arm systems [7,10], linear actuators [11], delta manipulators [14], compliant joint arms [2,19,20], long reach aerial manipulators [2,21], or three-arm manipulators used for object grasping and as reconfigurable landing gear [22].…”

Section: Introduction 1aerial Manipulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Compliance, either mechanical [7,[19][20][21][22][23] or at control level [11,[24][25][26], is a highly desirable feature for an aerial manipulation robot operating in contact with the environment since the stability of the aerial platform may be compromised due to the interaction wrenches exerted on flight [24,25,27]. The design and development of compliant manipulators aim to increase safety by exploiting the energy storage capacity and passivity properties of springs [7,19,26] and elastomers [23] while protecting the aerial robot against impacts and overloads [23].…”

Section: Introduction 1aerial Manipulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Cartesian Aerial Manipulator with Compliant Arm

et al. 2021

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper presents an aerial manipulation robot consisting of a hexa-rotor equipped with a 2-DOF (degree of freedom) Cartesian base (XY–axes) that supports a 1-DOF compliant joint arm that integrates a gripper and an elastic linear force sensor. The proposed kinematic configuration improves the positioning accuracy of the end effector with respect to robotic arms with revolute joints, where each coordinate of the Cartesian position depends on all the joint angles. The Cartesian base reduces the inertia of the manipulator and the energy consumption since it does not need to lift its own weight. Consequently, the required torque is lower and, thus, the weight of the actuators. The linear and angular deflection sensors of the arm allow the estimation, monitoring and control of the interaction wrenches exerted in two axes (XZ) at the end effector. The kinematic and dynamic models are derived and compared with respect to a revolute-joint arm, proposing a force-position control scheme for the aerial robot. A battery counterweight mechanism is also incorporated in the X–axis linear guide to partially compensate for the motion of the manipulator. Experimental results indoors and outdoors show the performance of the robot, including object grasping and retrieval, contact force control, and force monitoring in grabbing situations.

show abstract

Section: Introduction 1aerial Manipulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introduction 1aerial Manipulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cartesian Aerial Manipulator with Compliant Arm

et al. 2021

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The second approach uses aerial manipulators with a robotic arm placed on the upper part of the multirotor to reach the inspection area while flying [ 22 ]. This solution opens the spectrum of applications that can be accomplished because the end effector of the manipulator can be designed for a specific use case, such as sensor installation [ 23 ], hammering tasks [ 24 ], deflection measurements [ 25 ], and others. The third approach is about using a morphing platform or a more complex robot with the capability of moving along the infrastructure, maintaining the contact with the surface [ 26 , 27 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fully-Actuated Aerial Manipulator for Infrastructure Contact Inspection: Design, Modeling, Localization, and Control

Sanchez-Cuevas

González-Morgado

Cortes

et al. 2020

Sensors

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper presents the design, modeling and control of a fully actuated aerial robot for infrastructure contact inspection as well as its localization system. Health assessment of transport infrastructure involves measurements with sensors in contact with the bridge and tunnel surfaces and the installation of monitoring sensing devices at specific points. The design of the aerial robot presented in the paper includes a 3DoF lightweight arm with a sensorized passive joint which can measure the contact force to regulate the force applied with the sensor on the structure. The aerial platform has been designed with tilted propellers to be fully actuated, achieving independent attitude and position control. It also mounts a “docking gear” to establish full contact with the infrastructure during the inspection, minimizing the measurement errors derived from the motion of the aerial platform and allowing full contact with the surface regardless of its condition (smooth, rough, ...). The localization system of the aerial robot uses multi-sensor fusion of the measurements of a topographic laser sensor on the ground and a tracking camera and inertial sensors on-board the aerial robot, to be able to fly under the bridge deck or close to the bridge pillars where GNSS satellite signals are not available. The paper also presents the modeling and control of the aerial robot. Validation experiments of the localization system and the control system, and with the aerial robot inspecting a real bridge are also included.

show abstract

“…The application of aerial manipulation robots to inspection and maintenance operations [1] in industrial scenarios like oil and gas refineries [2] [3], wind turbines [4], or bridges [5] [6] is motivated by the convenience to reduce the required time and cost with respect to conventional solutions carried out nowadays by human operators deployed on cranes and other infrastructures. The ability of multirotors [7] [8] and autonomous helicopters [9][10] to reach quickly and easily high altitude workspaces [11] [12] [13] can be useful in the installation [14] [15] and retrieval [14] [16] of sensors devices in polluted areas, transportation operations [17], inspection by contact [18] [19], crack repair [20], valve turning [21] and other torsional manipulation tasks [22], or in those tasks requiring the use of tools [23].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aerial Manipulator With Rolling Base for Inspection of Pipe Arrays

Suárez¹,

Caballero²,

Garofano³

et al. 2020

IEEE Access

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper considers the inspection by contact of long arrays of pipe structures in hard-to-reach places, typical of chemical plants or oil and gas industries, presenting the design of a hybrid rolling-aerial platform capable of landing and moving along the pipes without wasting energy in the propellers during the inspection. The presented robot overcomes the limitation in terms of operation time and positioning accuracy in the application of flying robots to industrial inspection and maintenance tasks. The robot consists of a hexarotor platform integrating a rolling base with velocity and direction control, and a 5-DOF (degree of freedom) robotic arm supported by a 1-DOF linear guide system that facilitates the deployment of the arm in the array of pipes to inspect their contour once the platform has landed. Given a set of points to be inspected in different arrays of pipes, the path of the multirotor and the rolling platform is planned with a hybrid RRT* (Rapidlyexploring Random Tree) based algorithm that minimizes the energy consumption. The performance of the system is evaluated in an illustrative outdoor scenario with two arrays of pipes, using a laser tracking system to measure the position of the robot from the ground control station.

show abstract

Sensor Installation and Retrieval Operations Using an Unmanned Aerial Manipulator

Cited by 65 publications

References 19 publications

Cartesian Aerial Manipulator with Compliant Arm

Cartesian Aerial Manipulator with Compliant Arm

Fully-Actuated Aerial Manipulator for Infrastructure Contact Inspection: Design, Modeling, Localization, and Control

Aerial Manipulator With Rolling Base for Inspection of Pipe Arrays

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About