Physical Interaction Oriented Aerial Manipulators: Contact Force Control and Implementation

Aerial manipulator (AM) systems are significantly more effective than both conventional manipulators and flying robots, especially in disaster rescue settings, because they can perform human-like interaction tasks in flight. However, controlling the contact force of an AM is difficult due to the coupling between its flying platform and manipulator. This paper proposes a contact force control framework to address this problem. First, the UAV/AM position response under an external force is studied, and it is theoretically shown that a closed-loop UAV/AM behaves as a spring-mass-damper system. Second, a contact force controller is designed using an inverse-dynamics method. Third, an attitude feed-forward approach is employed to improve the force tracking performance. Then, the real-time contact position is introduced into the control system to achieve interaction with an actively moving environment. Finally, an innovative AM is developed and subjected to flight experiments, validating the proposed framework. An AM’s characteristics in interaction operations are summarized, and general conclusions are drawn. This study is novel in that 1) the contact force control is implemented without relying on force sensors, 2) the whole framework is applicable for controlling a constant/variable contact force with high closed-loop performance, and 3) it can also perform reliable interaction with a dynamic and unknown environment. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Note to Practitioners</i> —This study is motivated by the contact force control problem of an aerial manipulator (AM) during interaction operations. Previous approaches have explored the feasibility of controlling contact forces to some extent, but they lack universality and assume a static environment. Ensuring sufficient safety and providing reliable solutions in real-world applications remain challenging. This paper aims to investigate the position response of a closed-loop aircraft system under external forces, without disrupting its existing steady flight. The proposed method transforms contact force control into position control, eliminating the need for a force sensor. A series of aerial experiments were conducted to validate the effectiveness and applicability of the method in various scenarios. Our ongoing work will focus on migrating such an AM system from a laboratory scenario to the real world.