Design Iterations for Passive Aerial Manipulator

Grabbing a manoeuvring target using drones is a challenging problem. This paper presents the design, development, and prototyping of a novel aerial manipulator for target interception. It is a single Degree of Freedom (DoF) manipulator with passive basket-type end-effector. The proposed design is energy efficient, light weight and suitable for aerial grabbing applications. The detailed design of the proposed manipulation mechanism and a novel in-flight extending propeller guard, is reported in this paper.

Collaborative Tracking and Capture of Aerial Object using UAVs

This work details the problem of aerial target capture using multiple UAVs. This problem is motivated from the challenge 1 of Mohammed Bin Zayed International Robotic Challenge 2020. The UAVs utilise visual feedback to autonomously detect target, approach it and capture without disturbing the vehicle which carries the target. Multi-UAV collaboration improves the efficiency of the system and increases the chance of capturing the ball robustly in short span of time. In this paper, the proposed architecture is validated through simulation in ROS-Gazebo environment and is further implemented on hardware.

Vision based Target Interception using Aerial Manipulation

Selective interception of objects in unknown environment autonomously by UAVs is an interesting problem. In this work, vision based interception is carried out. This problem is a part of challenge 1 of Mohammed Bin Zayed International Robotic Challenge, 2020, where, balloons are kept at five random locations for the UAVs to autonomously explore, detect, approach and intercept. The problem requires a different formulation to execute compared to the normal interception problems in literature. This work details the different aspect of this problem from vision to manipulator design. The frame work is implemented on hardware using Robot Operating System (ROS) communication architecture.