Versatile Articulated Aerial Robot DRAGON: Aerial Manipulation and Grasping by Vectorable Thrust

This is the video for a paper accepted by International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR). Paper URL: Titile: Versatile articulated aerial robot DRAGON: Aerial manipulation and grasping by vectorable thrust control Author: Moju Zhao, Kei Okada, Masayuki Inaba Abstract: Various state-of-the-art works have achieved aerial manipulation and grasping by attaching additional manipulator to aerial robots. However, such a coupled platform has limitations in interaction force and mobility. In this paper, we present the achievement of aerial manipulation and grasping by a novel articulated aerial robot called DRAGON, in which a vectorable rotor unit is embedded in each link. The key to performing stable manipulation and grasping in the air is the two degrees-of-freedom rotor vectoring apparatus. First, a comprehensive flight control methodology for aerial transformation using the vectorable thrust force is developed, which also allows integration with external and internal for object manipulation and grasping. Second, the online motion planning for object manipulation using the external wrench exerted by the end-effector is developed, which has a feedback loop with the object pose for end-effector position and wrench control. Third, the planning method for object grasping using two ends of this articulated model is presented. The unique point of the proposed grasping style is the vectorable thrust force is used as the internal wrench instead of the joint torque. Finally, we show the experimental results of evaluation on the proposed flight control method and the planning methods for object manipulation and grasping.