Towards the realization of mobile manipulating unmanned aerial vehicles (MM-UAV): Peg-in-hole insertion tasks

This paper proposes a solution to the peg-in-hole problem from an aerial vehicle. While the ground robotics community has mostly solved insertion-style tasks, an air vehicle attempting the same task faces significantly greater challenges. Thus, aerial manipulation mandates a strongly coupled aircraft-arm control scheme to tackle the peg-in-hole problem. Manipulator compliance along with fast inverse kinematics calculations facilitate task completion during hover. We present recent results showing the ability of a simulated dexterous aerial manipulator performing a hose into pump insertion. Kinematic and dynamic modeling of the aircraft-manipulator system are developed. Simulation results validate our system model by generating a kinematic solution and arm trajectory. Lastly, a hardware-in-the-loop test rig is proposed to bridge the gap between basic aerial manipulation research and the ability of flying robots to perform tasks such as door opening, bridge repair, agriculture care, and other applications requiring interaction with the environment. In particular, the usefulness of these capabilities is highlighted in areas where ground robots cannot reach or terrains they are unable to navigate.