Stability and Robustness Analysis of Plug-Pulling using an Aerial Manipulator
This addresses a specific problem in aerial robotics for manipulation tasks, but it is incremental as it applies existing hybrid automata theory to a new scenario.
The paper tackles the challenge of maintaining stability and robustness in an autonomous aerial manipulation task of pulling a plug from an electric socket, where sudden force changes can cause destabilization, and validates the approach with an actual experiment using a multirotor-based aerial manipulator.
In this paper, an autonomous aerial manipulation task of pulling a plug out of an electric socket is conducted, where maintaining the stability and robustness is challenging due to sudden disappearance of a large interaction force. The abrupt change in the dynamical model before and after the separation of the plug can cause destabilization or mission failure. To accomplish aerial plug-pulling, we employ the concept of hybrid automata to divide the task into three operative modes, i.e, wire-pulling, stabilizing, and free-flight. Also, a strategy for trajectory generation and a design of disturbance-observer-based controllers for each operative mode are presented. Furthermore, the theory of hybrid automata is used to prove the stability and robustness during the mode transition. We validate the proposed trajectory generation and control method by an actual wire-pulling experiment with a multirotor-based aerial manipulator.