Mechanical Design, Modelling and Control of a Novel Aerial Manipulator

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel aerial manipulation system with optimized mechanical design, detailed modeling, and an adaptive control strategy, validated through simulation of a manipulation task.

Contribution

It presents a new aerial manipulator design optimized via technical problems, with comprehensive modeling and an adaptive backstepping control approach.

Findings

Successful simulation of manipulation task

Effective control of end-effector position and orientation

Optimized thruster configuration for actuation

Abstract

In this paper a novel aerial manipulation system is proposed. The mechanical structure of the system, the number of thrusters and their geometry will be derived from technical optimization problems. The aforementioned problems are defined by taking into consideration the desired actuation forces and torques applied to the end-effector of the system. The framework of the proposed system is designed in a CAD Package in order to evaluate the system parameter values. Following this, the kinematic and dynamic models are developed and an adaptive backstepping controller is designed aiming to control the exact position and orientation of the end-effector in the Cartesian space. Finally, the performance of the system is demonstrated through a simulation study, where a manipulation task scenario is investigated.