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Journal ArticleDOI

The AEROARMS Project: Aerial Robots with Advanced Manipulation Capabilities for Inspection and Maintenance

TL;DR: This article summarizes new aerial robotic manipulation technologies and methods-aerial robotic manipulators with dual arms and multidirectional thrusters-developed in the AEROARMS project for outdoor industrial inspection and maintenance (I&M).
Abstract: This article summarizes new aerial robotic manipulation technologies and methods-aerial robotic manipulators with dual arms and multidirectional thrusters-developed in the AEROARMS project for outdoor industrial inspection and maintenance (IaM).

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
29 Jan 2019
TL;DR: The proposed aerial manipulator consists of a multidirectional-thrust aerial vehicle—to enhance physical interaction capabilities—endowed with a 2-DoFs lightweight arm—to enlarge its workspace and makes it a truly-redundant manipulator going beyond standard aerial manipulators based on collinear multirotor platforms.
Abstract: We present the design, motion planning, and control of an aerial manipulator for non-trivial physical interaction tasks, such as pushing while sliding on curved surfaces—a task which is motivated by the increasing interest in autonomous non-destructive tests for industrial plants. The proposed aerial manipulator consists of a multidirectional-thrust aerial vehicle—to enhance physical interaction capabilities—endowed with a 2-DoFs lightweight arm—to enlarge its workspace. This combination makes it a truly-redundant manipulator going beyond standard aerial manipulators based on collinear multirotor platforms. The controller is based on a PID method with a “displaced” positional part that ensures asymptotic stability despite the arm elasticity. A kinodynamic task-constrained and control-aware global motion planner is used. Experiments show that the proposed aerial manipulator system, equipped with an Eddy current probe, is able to scan a metallic pipe sliding the sensor over its surface and preserving the contact. From the measures, a weld on the pipe is successfully detected and mapped.

124 citations


Additional excerpts

  • ...This is because of the extremely challenging nature of aerial physical interaction problem, currently under investigation by several research labs and projects like Aeroarms [4]....

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  • ...research labs and projects like Aeroarms [4]....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper , the evolution and current trends in aerial robotic manipulation, comprising helicopters, conventional underactuated multirotors, and multidirectional thrust platforms equipped with a wide variety of robotic manipulators capable of physically interacting with the environment, are analyzed.
Abstract: This article analyzes the evolution and current trends in aerial robotic manipulation, comprising helicopters, conventional underactuated multirotors, and multidirectional thrust platforms equipped with a wide variety of robotic manipulators capable of physically interacting with the environment. It also covers cooperative aerial manipulation and interconnected actuated multibody designs. The review is completed with developments in teleoperation, perception, and planning. Finally, a new generation of aerial robotic manipulators is presented with our vision of the future.

65 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Jul 2020-Robotica
TL;DR: A complete and systematic review of related research on this topic is conducted, and various types of structure designs of aerial manipulators are listed out.
Abstract: The aerial manipulator is a special and new type of flying robot composed of a rotorcraft unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and a/several manipulator/s. It has gained a lot of attention since its initial appearance in 2010. This is mainly because it enables traditional UAVs to conduct versatile manipulating tasks from air, considerably enriching their applications. In this survey, a complete and systematic review of related research on this topic is conducted. First, various types of structure designs of aerial manipulators are listed out. Subsequently, the modeling and control methods are introduced in detail from the perspective of two types of typical application cases: free-flight and motion-restricted operations. Finally, challenges for future research are presented.

63 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
TL;DR: An omnidirectional aerial manipulation platform for robust and responsive interaction with unstructured environments, toward the goal of contact-based inspection, equipped with a rigidly mounted end-effector and an impedance controller with selective apparent inertia.
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.

61 citations


Cites background from "The AEROARMS Project: Aerial Robots..."

  • ...Recent publications have demonstrated push-and-slide interaction and disturbance rejection, as well as various industrial applications [12, 19, 20, 11]....

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  • ...full actuation by fixedly tilting the propeller groups of a traditional MAV to generate internal forces that are optimized for interaction [17, 18, 19, 20, 11]....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A variable axis-selective impedance control is presented which integrates direct force control for intentional interaction, using feedback from an on-board force sensor, and is validated as a tool for nondestructive testing of concrete infrastructure.
Abstract: This article presents and validates active interaction force control and planning for fully actuated and omnidirectional aerial manipulation platforms, with the goal of aerial contact inspection in unstructured environments. We present a variable axis-selective impedance control which integrates direct force control for intentional interaction, using feedback from an on-board force sensor. The control approach aims to reject disturbances in free flight, while handling unintentional interaction and actively controlling desired interaction forces. A fully actuated and omnidirectional tilt-rotor aerial system is used to show capabilities of the control and planning methods. Experiments demonstrate disturbance rejection, push-and-slide interaction, and force-controlled interaction in different flight orientations. The system is validated as a tool for nondestructive testing of concrete infrastructure, and statistical results of interaction control performance are presented and discussed.

48 citations

References
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: ORB-SLAM as discussed by the authors is a feature-based monocular SLAM system that operates in real time, in small and large indoor and outdoor environments, with a survival of the fittest strategy that selects the points and keyframes of the reconstruction.
Abstract: This paper presents ORB-SLAM, a feature-based monocular simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) system that operates in real time, in small and large indoor and outdoor environments. The system is robust to severe motion clutter, allows wide baseline loop closing and relocalization, and includes full automatic initialization. Building on excellent algorithms of recent years, we designed from scratch a novel system that uses the same features for all SLAM tasks: tracking, mapping, relocalization, and loop closing. A survival of the fittest strategy that selects the points and keyframes of the reconstruction leads to excellent robustness and generates a compact and trackable map that only grows if the scene content changes, allowing lifelong operation. We present an exhaustive evaluation in 27 sequences from the most popular datasets. ORB-SLAM achieves unprecedented performance with respect to other state-of-the-art monocular SLAM approaches. For the benefit of the community, we make the source code public.

4,522 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A survival of the fittest strategy that selects the points and keyframes of the reconstruction leads to excellent robustness and generates a compact and trackable map that only grows if the scene content changes, allowing lifelong operation.
Abstract: This paper presents ORB-SLAM, a feature-based monocular SLAM system that operates in real time, in small and large, indoor and outdoor environments. The system is robust to severe motion clutter, allows wide baseline loop closing and relocalization, and includes full automatic initialization. Building on excellent algorithms of recent years, we designed from scratch a novel system that uses the same features for all SLAM tasks: tracking, mapping, relocalization, and loop closing. A survival of the fittest strategy that selects the points and keyframes of the reconstruction leads to excellent robustness and generates a compact and trackable map that only grows if the scene content changes, allowing lifelong operation. We present an exhaustive evaluation in 27 sequences from the most popular datasets. ORB-SLAM achieves unprecedented performance with respect to other state-of-the-art monocular SLAM approaches. For the benefit of the community, we make the source code public.

3,807 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
12 Jul 2014
TL;DR: The method achieves both low-drift and low-computational complexity without the need for high accuracy ranging or inertial measurements and can achieve accuracy at the level of state of the art offline batch methods.
Abstract: We propose a real-time method for odometry and mapping using range measurements from a 2-axis lidar moving in 6-DOF. The problem is hard because the range measurements are received at different times, and errors in motion estimation can cause mis-registration of the resulting point cloud. To date, coherent 3D maps can be built by off-line batch methods, often using loop closure to correct for drift over time. Our method achieves both low-drift and low-computational complexity without the need for high accuracy ranging or inertial measurements. The key idea in obtaining this level of performance is the division of the complex problem of simultaneous localization and mapping, which seeks to optimize a large number of variables simultaneously, by two algorithms. One algorithm performs odometry at a high frequency but low fidelity to estimate velocity of the lidar. Another algorithm runs at a frequency of an order of magnitude lower for fine matching and registration of the point cloud. Combination of the two algorithms allows the method to map in real-time. The method has been evaluated by a large set of experiments as well as on the KITTI odometry benchmark. The results indicate that the method can achieve accuracy at the level of state of the art offline batch methods.

1,879 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper develops robot configurations that ensure static equilibrium of the payload at a desired pose while respecting constraints on the tension and provides analysis of payload stability for these configurations.
Abstract: In this paper we consider the problem of controlling multiple robots manipulating and transporting a payload in three dimensions via cables. We develop robot configurations that ensure static equilibrium of the payload at a desired pose while respecting constraints on the tension and provide analysis of payload stability for these configurations. We demonstrate our methods on a team of aerial robots via simulation and experimentation.

624 citations


"The AEROARMS Project: Aerial Robots..." refers background in this paper

  • ...These indoor works included picking and basic manipulation with quadrotors and also cooperative assembly with several aerial robots [2]....

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Proceedings ArticleDOI
01 May 2017
TL;DR: This paper builds upon ORB-SLAM, presumably the current state-of-the-art solution both in terms of accuracy as efficiency, and extends its formulation to simultaneously handle both point and line correspondences, and demonstrates that the use of lines does not only improve the performance of the original ORB -SLAM solution in poorly textured frames, but also systematically improves it in sequence frames combining points and lines, without compromising the efficiency.
Abstract: Low textured scenes are well known to be one of the main Achilles heels of geometric computer vision algorithms relying on point correspondences, and in particular for visual SLAM. Yet, there are many environments in which, despite being low textured, one can still reliably estimate line-based geometric primitives, for instance in city and indoor scenes, or in the so-called “Manhattan worlds”, where structured edges are predominant. In this paper we propose a solution to handle these situations. Specifically, we build upon ORB-SLAM, presumably the current state-of-the-art solution both in terms of accuracy as efficiency, and extend its formulation to simultaneously handle both point and line correspondences. We propose a solution that can even work when most of the points are vanished out from the input images, and, interestingly it can be initialized from solely the detection of line correspondences in three consecutive frames. We thoroughly evaluate our approach and the new initialization strategy on the TUM RGB-D benchmark and demonstrate that the use of lines does not only improve the performance of the original ORB-SLAM solution in poorly textured frames, but also systematically improves it in sequence frames combining points and lines, without compromising the efficiency.

330 citations