Impedance control of an aerial manipulator

Abstract

This work focuses on the modeling and control of an innovative configuration of aerial robot arising from the combination of a vertical take-off and landing aircraft and a robotic arm. The overall system, denoted as aerial manipulator, is able to accomplish operations requiring the physical interaction with the surrounding environment while remaining airborne. After introducing a detailed dynamical model, a control law, based on the impedance control paradigm, able to govern all the degrees of freedom of the system is proposed. The effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm are investigated also considering the case in which contacts with the surrounding environment are achieved.