Chat-PM: A Class of Composite Hybrid Aerial/Terrestrial Precise Manipulator

TL;DR

This paper introduces Chat-PM, a hybrid aerial/terrestrial manipulator with advanced control and force estimation techniques, demonstrating improved reachability, precision, and energy efficiency through real-world experiments.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel composite hybrid manipulator design with integrated dynamics modeling, motion control, and force estimation methods for enhanced terrestrial and aerial manipulation.

Findings

Higher control precision achieved in terrestrial mode

Effective force and inclination estimation on unknown surfaces

Demonstrated superior manipulation performance in real-world tests

Abstract

This paper concentrates on the development of Chat-PM, a class of composite hybrid aerial/terrestrial manipulator, in concern with composite configuration design, dynamics modeling, motion control and force estimation. Compared with existing aerial or terrestrial mobile manipulators, Chat-PM demonstrates advantages in terms of reachability, energy efficiency and manipulation precision. To achieve precise manipulation in terrestrial mode, the dynamics is analyzed with consideration of surface contact, based on which a cascaded controller is designed with compensation for the interference force and torque from the arm. Benefiting from the kinematic constraints caused by the surface contact, the position deviation and the vehicle vibration are effectively decreased, resulting in higher control precision of the end gripper. For manipulation on surfaces with unknown inclination angles, the moving horizon estimation (MHE) is exploited to obtain the precise estimations of force and inclination angle, which are used in the control loop to compensate for the effect of the unknown surface. Real-world experiments are performed to evaluate the superiority of the developed manipulator and the proposed controllers.