Towards An Adaptive-Compliance Aerial Manipulator for Contact-Based Interaction

As roles for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)continue to diversify, the ability to sense and interact closely with the environment becomes increasingly important. Within this paper we report on the initial flight tests of a novel adaptively compliant actuator which will allow a UAV to carry out such tasks as the “pick and placement” of remote sensors, structural testing and contact-based inspection. Three key results are discussed and presented; the ability to physically apply forces with the UAV through the use of an active compliant manipulator; the ability to tailor these forces through tuning of the manipulator controller gains; and the ability to apply a rapid series of physical pulses in order to excite remotely placed sensors, e.g. vibration sensors. A series of over sixty flight tests have been used to generate initial results which clearly demonstrate the potential of this new type of compliant aerial actuator.