Aerial Grasping: Modeling and Control of a Flying Hand
This addresses the challenge of aerial manipulation for tasks like inspection or retrieval in hard-to-reach environments, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing UAV and robotic arm technologies.
The paper tackled the problem of controlling a flying hand system to grasp objects from a vertical wall, demonstrating successful approach, docking, and retrieval in both simulation and experiments.
In this paper, we present the design, simulation and experimental validation of a control architecture for a flying hand, i.e., a system made of an unmanned aerial vehicle, a robotic manipulator and a gripper, which is grasping an object fixed on a vertical wall. The goal of this work is to show that the overall control allows the flying hand to approach the wall, to dock on the object by means of the gripper, take the object and fly away. The control strategy has been implemented and validated in the simulated model and in experiments on the complete flying hand system.