Development of SAM: cable-Suspended Aerial Manipulator
This addresses safety issues for aerial manipulation systems in cluttered environments, representing an incremental improvement over existing designs.
The paper tackles the problem of collision risk for aerial manipulators in complex environments by introducing a cable-suspended aerial manipulator (SAM), which achieves higher safety by keeping the aerial carrier at a distance from obstacles, with experimental results demonstrating its feasibility.
High risk of a collision between rotor blades and the obstacles in a complex environment imposes restrictions on the aerial manipulators. To solve this issue, a novel system cable-Suspended Aerial Manipulator (SAM) is presented in this paper. Instead of attaching a robotic manipulator directly to an aerial carrier, it is mounted on an active platform which is suspended on the carrier by means of a cable. As a result, higher safety can be achieved because the aerial carrier can keep a distance from the obstacles. For self-stabilization, the SAM is equipped with two actuation systems: winches and propulsion units. This paper presents an overview of the SAM including the concept behind, hardware realization, control strategy, and the first experimental results.