skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Explore Research Products in the PAR
It may take a few hours for recently added research products to appear in PAR search results.


Title: Launching a Micro–Scout UAV from a Mobile Robotic Manipulator Arm
This paper addresses the problem of autonomously deploying an unmanned aerial vehicle in non-trivial settings, by leveraging a manipulator arm mounted on a ground robot, acting as a versatile mobile launch platform. As real-world deployment scenarios for micro aerial vehicles such as searchand- rescue operations often entail exploration and navigation of challenging environments including uneven terrain, cluttered spaces, or even constrained openings and passageways, an often arising problem is that of ensuring a safe take-off location, or safely fitting through narrow openings while in flight. By facilitating launching from the manipulator end-effector, a 6- DoF controllable take-off pose within the arm workspace can be achieved, which allows to properly position and orient the aerial vehicle to initialize the autonomous flight portion of a mission. To accomplish this, we propose a sampling-based planner that respects a) the kinematic constraints of the ground robot / manipulator / aerial robot combination, b) the geometry of the environment as autonomously mapped by the ground robots perception systems, and c) accounts for the aerial robot expected dynamic motion during takeoff. The goal of the proposed planner is to ensure autonomous collision-free initialization of an aerial robotic exploration mission, even within a cluttered constrained environment. At the same time, the ground robot with the mounted manipulator can be used to appropriately position the take-off workspace into areas of interest, effectively acting as a carrier launch platform. We experimentally demonstrate this novel robotic capability through a sequence of experiments that encompass a micro aerial vehicle platform carried and launched from a 6-DoF manipulator arm mounted on a four-wheel robot base.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2008904
PAR ID:
10296731
Author(s) / Creator(s):
;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
2021 IEEE Conference on Aerospace
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; (, 2021 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems)
    null (Ed.)
    This paper presents a novel strategy for the autonomous deployment of Micro Aerial Vehicle scouts through constricted aperture-like ingress points, by narrowly fitting and launching them with a high-precision Mobile Manipulation robot. A significant problem during exploration and reconnaissance into highly unstructured environments, such as indoor collapsed ones, is the encountering of impassable areas due to their constricted and rigid nature. We propose that a heterogeneous robotic system-of-systems armed with manipulation capabilities while also ferrying a fleet of micro-sized aerial agents, can deploy the latter through constricted apertures that marginally fit them in size, thus allowing them to act as scouts and resume the reconnaissance mission. This work's contribution is twofold: first, it proposes active-vision based aperture detection to locate candidate ingress points and a hierarchical search-based aperture profile analysis to position a MAV's body through them, and secondly it presents and experimentally demonstrates the novelty of a system-of-systems approach which leverages mobile manipulation to deploy other robots which are otherwise incapable of entering through extremely narrow openings. 
    more » « less
  2. ; ; ; ; ; ; (, International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems)
    In this work we address the System-of-Systems reassembling operation of a marsupial team comprising a hybrid Unmanned Aerial Vehicle and a Legged Locomotion robot, relying solely on vision-based systems and assisted by Deep Learning. The target application domain is that of large-scale field surveying operations under the presence of wireless communication disruptions. While most real-world field deployments of multi-robot systems assume some degree of wireless communication to coordinate key tasks such as multi-agent rendezvous, a desirable feature against unrecoverable communication failures or radio degradation due to jamming cyber-attacks is the ability for autonomous systems to robustly execute their mission with onboard perception. This is especially true for marsupial air / ground teams, wherein landing onboard the ground robot is required. We propose a pipeline that relies on Deep Neural Network-based Vehicle-to-Vehicle detection based on aerial views acquired by flying at typical altitudes for Micro Aerial Vehicle-based real-world surveying operations, such as near the border of the 400ft Above Ground Level window. We present the minimal computing and sensing suite that supports its execution onboard a fully autonomous micro-Tiltrotor aircraft which detects, approaches, and lands onboard a Boston Dynamics Spot legged robot. We present extensive experimental studies that validate this marsupial aerial / ground robot’s capacity to safely reassemble while in the airborne scouting phase without the need for wireless communication. 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ; (, Advanced Robotics Research)
    Robotic fruit harvesting holds potential in precision agriculture to improve harvesting efficiency. While ground mobile robots are mostly employed in fruit harvesting, certain crops, like avocado trees, cannot be harvested efficiently from the ground alone. This is because of unstructured ground and planting arrangement and high‐to‐reach fruits. In such cases, aerial robots integrated with manipulation capabilities can pave new ways in robotic harvesting. This paper outlines the design and implementation of a bimanual aerial robot that employs visual perception and learning to detect avocados, reach, and harvest them autonomously. The dual‐arm system comprises a gripper and a fixer arm, to address a key challenge when harvesting avocados: once grasped, applying a rotational motion is the most mechanically efficient way to detach the avocado from the peduncle; however, the peduncle may store elastic energy preventing the avocado from being harvested. The fixer arm aims to stabilize the peduncle, allowing the gripper arm to harvest. The integrated visual perception process enables the detection of avocados and the determination of their pose; the latter is then used to determine target points for a bimanual manipulation planner. Several experiments are conducted in controlled indoor and outdoor settings to assess the efficacy of each component individually. Further, an integrated experiment in outdoor semicontrolled settings is used for feasibility assessment of the overall system. Results demonstrate that all different components can work synergistically to enable robotic avocado harvesting in (semi‐)controlled settings. Results also highlight limitations of an airborne harvesting solution and reveal tradeoffs to be considered in the selection of a harvesting robot. 
    more » « less
  4. ; ; ; ; ; ; (, 2023 IEEE Aerospace Conference)
    In this work we address the flexible physical docking-and-release as well as recharging needs for a marsupial system comprising an autonomous tiltrotor hybrid Micro Aerial Vehicle and a high-end legged locomotion robot. Within persistent monitoring and emergency response situations, such aerial / ground robot teams can offer rapid situational awareness by taking off from the mobile ground robot and scouting a wide area from the sky. For this type of operational profile to retain its long-term effectiveness, regrouping via landing and docking of the aerial robot onboard the ground one is a key requirement. Moreover, onboard recharging is a necessity in order to perform systematic missions. We present a framework comprising: a novel landing mechanism with recharging capabilities embedded into its design, an external battery-based recharging extension for our previously developed power-harvesting Micro Aerial Vehicle module, as well as a strategy for the reliable landing and the docking-and-release between the two robots. We specifically address the need for this system to be ferried by a quadruped ground system while remaining reliable during aggressive legged locomotion when traversing harsh terrain. We present conclusive experimental validation studies by deploying our solution on a marsupial system comprising the MiniHawk micro tiltrotor and the Boston Dynamics Spot legged robot. 
    more » « less
  5. ; ; ; ; (, Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics)
    Abstract Research in quadrupedal robotics is transitioning to studies into loco-manipulation, featuring fully articulated robotic arms mounted atop these robots. Integrating such arms enhances the practical utility of legged robots, paving the way for expanded applications like industrial inspection and search and rescue. Existing literature commonly employs a six-degree-of-freedom (six-DoF) arm directly mounted to the robot, which inherently adds significant weight and reduces the available payload for manipulation tasks. Our study explores an optimized combination of arm configuration and control framework by strategically reducing the DoFs and leveraging the quadruped robot’s inherent agile mobility. We demonstrate that by minimizing the DoFs to just one, a range of canonical loco-manipulation tasks can still be accomplished. Some tasks even show improved performance with fewer robotic arm DoFs due to the higher torque motor used in the design, allowing more of the robot’s payload to be used for manipulation. We designed our optimized one-DoF robotic arm and the control framework and tested it on top of a Unitree Aliengo. Our design outperforms conventional six-DoF counterparts in lifting capacity, achieving an impressive 8 kg payload compared to the 2 kg maximum payload of industry-standard six-DoF robotic arms on the same quadruped platform. 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email