Session: MR-03-02 - Compliant Mechanisms (A. Midha Symposium)

Paper Number: 90595

90595 - A Modular Continuum Manipulator for Aerial Manipulation and Perching 

Aerial Manipulation is getting an increasingly attention in recent years. The integration of robotic arm and aerial vehicle platform leads to a board range of potential applications. Currently, most aerial manipulators use serial rigid-link designs, which results in large forces when initiating contacts during manipulation and could cause flight stability difficulty. This limitation could be significantly improved by introducing the compliance of continuum manipulators into aerial manipulation tasks.
To achieve this goal, we present the novel design of a compact, lightweight, and modular cable-driven continuum manip-
ulator for aerial drones. We then derive a complete modeling framework for the kinematics, statics, and stiffness (compliance), which is essential for integrating to aerial drones. Finally, we report preliminary experimental validations of the hardware prototype, providing insights on its integration feasibility. Several tests and experiments are carried out to assess the arm’s performance when subjected to external force. An indoor experimental setup is built to imitate UAV’s motion for the
purpose of initial testing and performance measurements. Future work includes the integration and test of the proposed continuum manipulator with aerial drones. There is still a lot of work to be done in terms of controlling the arm and the UAV as independent systems and as an integrated system, and then using the system to proceed with more advanced experiments.

 

Presenting Author: Qianwen Zhao Stevens Institute of Technology

Presenting Author Biography: Qianwen Zhao received the B.E. degree and M.E. degree in electrical engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey, NJ, USA, in 2019 and 2020, respectively. She is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering at Stevens, with research interests in robot manipulation, grasping uncertainty modeling and simulation, and system control.

Authors:

Qianwen Zhao Stevens Institute of Technology
Guoqing Zhang Stevens Institute of Technology
Hamidreza Jafarnejadsani Stevens Institute of Technology
Long Wang Stevens Institute of Technology