Author page: Seidrob

The Robotics, Vision and Control group (GRVC) of the University of Seville organizes a full-day tutorial on Aerial Robotic Manipulation at the IROS 2018 conference, that will be held in Madrid on October 5th, 2018. The tutorial provides an introduction to the theory and practice of aerial manipulation. Aerial manipulators are aerial robots with attached mechatronic devices as robotic arms or grippers, which are able to grasp, transport, position and manipulate objects and apply forces to the environment. The design, control and sensing of aerial manipulators present differences and challenges with respect to aerial robots that are the focus of this tutorial.

The mechatronic design of aerial manipulators is severely limited by the payload of the aerial platform. Installing arms with several DOFs involves the use of compact actuators, which also constraint the payload of the arm itself and its capacity to apply forces. Then, aerial manipulator controllers have to deal with the dynamic coupling of the movement of the arms, the disturbances of the contact forces and the weight of grasped objects. Additionally to the usual sensors in aerial robots, proprioceptive sensing of the state of the arms and mechanical devices is important for controller development. As aerial manipulators fly and interact closely with the environment, perception for estimation of relative pose with respect to the objects and the environment is critical. This tutorial aims at addressing all these issues from a practical point of view, introducing the different problems and presenting solutions that have been tested in practice in different applications.