AEROBULL: A Center-of-Mass Displacing Aerial Vehicle Enabling Efficient High-Force Interaction

TL;DR

This paper introduces AEROBULL, a lightweight aerial vehicle with a shifting center of mass and tiltable rotors, enabling high-force interactions for industrial inspection and maintenance tasks.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel UAV design with dynamic CoM adjustment and tiltable rotors, enhancing force exertion capabilities for contact-based industrial applications.

Findings

Exerted over 28N pushing force, nearly equal to its weight.

Demonstrated improved force performance with CoM displacement.

Validated control algorithms through physical experiments.

Abstract

In various industrial sectors, inspection and maintenance tasks using UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) require substantial force application to ensure effective adherence and stable contact, posing significant challenges to existing solutions. This paper addresses these industrial needs by introducing a novel lightweight aerial platform (3.12kg) designed to exert high pushing forces on non-horizontal surfaces. To increase maneuverability, the proposed platform incorporates tiltable rotors with 5-DoF (Degree of Freedom) actuation. Moreover, it has an innovative shifting-mass mechanism that dynamically adjusts the system's CoM (Center of Mass) during contact-based task execution. A compliant EE (End-Effector) is applied to ensure a smooth interaction with the work surface. We provide a detailed study of the UAV's overall system design, hardware integration of the developed physical prototype, and software architecture of the proposed control algorithm. Physical experiments were conducted to validate the control design and explore the force generation capability of the designed platform via a pushing task. With a total mass of 3.12kg, the UAV exerted a maximum pushing force of above 28N being almost equal to its gravity force. Furthermore, the experiments illustrated the benefits of having displaced CoM by benchmarking with a fixed CoM configuration.