# An Omnidirectional Aerial Manipulation Platform for Contact-Based Inspection

## TL;DR

This paper introduces an omnidirectional aerial manipulation platform capable of contact-based inspection, featuring fully actuated tilt-rotor design, precise force control, and validated experiments for infrastructure testing.

## Contribution

The paper presents a novel fully actuated tilt-rotor aerial system with advanced force control for contact-based inspection and interaction in unstructured environments.

## Key findings

- Effective disturbance rejection demonstrated
- Successful push-and-slide interaction tests
- Validated for non-destructive testing of concrete

## Abstract

This paper presents an omnidirectional aerial manipulation platform for robust and responsive interaction with unstructured environments, toward the goal of contact-based inspection. The fully actuated tilt-rotor aerial system is equipped with a rigidly mounted end-effector, and is able to exert a 6 degree of freedom force and torque, decoupling the system's translational and rotational dynamics, and enabling precise interaction with the environment while maintaining stability. An impedance controller with selective apparent inertia is formulated to permit compliance in certain degrees of freedom while achieving precise trajectory tracking and disturbance rejection in others. Experiments demonstrate disturbance rejection, push-and-slide interaction, and on-board state estimation with depth servoing to interact with local surfaces. The system is also validated as a tool for contact-based non-destructive testing of concrete infrastructure.