A novel robotic platform for aerial manipulation using quadrotors as rotating thrust generators
Author(s)
Nguyen, H-N
Park, S
Park, J
Lee, DJ
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
We propose a novel robotic platform for aerial op-
eration and manipulation, a spherically connected multiquadro-
tor (SmQ) platform, which consists of a rigid frame and multiple
quadrotors that are connected to the frame via passive spherical
joints and act as distributed rotating thrust generators to collec-
tively propel the frame by adjusting their attitude and thrust force.
Depending on the number of quadrotors and their configuration,
this SmQ platform can fully (or partially) overcome the issues of
underactuation of the standard multirotor drones for aerial oper-
ation/manipulation (e.g., body-tilting with sideway gust/force, dy-
namic interaction hard to attain, complicated arm–drone integra-
tion, etc.). We present the dynamics modeling of this SmQ platform
system and establish the condition for its full actuation in SE(3).
We also show how to address limited range of spherical joints and
rotor saturations as a constrained optimization problem by notic-
ing the similarity with the multifingered grasping problem under
the friction-cone constraint. We then design and analyze feedback
control laws for the S3Q and S2Q systems as a combination of
high-level Lyapunov control design and low-level constrained opti-
mization and show that the (fully actuated) S3Q system can assume
any trajectory in SE(3), whereas the S2Q system in
3
×
S
2
with
its unactuated dynamics is still internally stable. Experiments are
also performed to show the efficacy of the theory.
eration and manipulation, a spherically connected multiquadro-
tor (SmQ) platform, which consists of a rigid frame and multiple
quadrotors that are connected to the frame via passive spherical
joints and act as distributed rotating thrust generators to collec-
tively propel the frame by adjusting their attitude and thrust force.
Depending on the number of quadrotors and their configuration,
this SmQ platform can fully (or partially) overcome the issues of
underactuation of the standard multirotor drones for aerial oper-
ation/manipulation (e.g., body-tilting with sideway gust/force, dy-
namic interaction hard to attain, complicated arm–drone integra-
tion, etc.). We present the dynamics modeling of this SmQ platform
system and establish the condition for its full actuation in SE(3).
We also show how to address limited range of spherical joints and
rotor saturations as a constrained optimization problem by notic-
ing the similarity with the multifingered grasping problem under
the friction-cone constraint. We then design and analyze feedback
control laws for the S3Q and S2Q systems as a combination of
high-level Lyapunov control design and low-level constrained opti-
mization and show that the (fully actuated) S3Q system can assume
any trajectory in SE(3), whereas the S2Q system in
3
×
S
2
with
its unactuated dynamics is still internally stable. Experiments are
also performed to show the efficacy of the theory.
Date Issued
2018-04-01
Date Acceptance
2017-12-09
Citation
IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 2018, 34 (2), pp.353-369
ISSN
1552-3098
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Start Page
353
End Page
369
Journal / Book Title
IEEE Transactions on Robotics
Volume
34
Issue
2
Copyright Statement
© 2018 IEEE. Translations and content mining are permitted for academic research only. Personal use is also permitted, but republication/
redistribution
requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications
standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
redistribution
requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications
standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
Subjects
0801 Artificial Intelligence And Image Processing
0906 Electrical And Electronic Engineering
0913 Mechanical Engineering
Industrial Engineering & Automation
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2018-02-28