Development of a Vision-enabled Aerial Manipulator using a Parallel Robot

Abstract

In this paper, we propose an additional type of the aerial manipulation. The proposed type utilizes an eye-in-hand type parallel robot, which has the visual sensor system attached on the end-effector. The proposed aerial manipulator can maximize the advantages of the serial manipulator while minimizing their shortcomings. In order to enhance these advantages, we derive the loosely-coupled end-effector dynamics and apply it into the host vehicle with the simple control law. Furthermore, we propose a vision-enabled end effector control architecture based on the inverse kinematics of the parallel robot. The proposed system is verified and validated by performing the flight test.