Quadrotor drone with compact robotic arm improves aerial manipulation
QuadHand: A Compact Quadrotor Aerial Manipulator with MRC-SDF-Based Whole-Body Motion Planning
Robotics
Summary
Flying robots that use arms to interact with objects often face problems because bigger arms cause more instability. The authors introduce QuadHand, a small drone equipped with a three-joint arm and a gripper, plus a mechanism to keep the drone balanced while moving. They also developed a new way to model the arm’s shape precisely yet efficiently, helping plan safe movements for both drone and arm together. Tests in simulations and real life show QuadHand can handle complex tasks without crashing or losing control.
What this means in practice
- •For drone operators: Enable drones to perform precise object grasping and manipulation safely in cluttered environments using integrated arm and flight control.$Commercial implications: Makes it possible to sell advanced drones capable of reliable aerial picking and placing for industrial automation and inspection.
- •For robotic system integrators: Provide a compact drone platform and efficient motion planning method for developing aerial robots that interact closely with complex surroundings.
Authors
Rui Jin, Ruiyang Liu, Xinhang Xu, Haotian Jin, Yi Wang, Yizhuo Yang, Lihua Xi
Abstract
Uncrewed aerial manipulators (UAMs) integrate robotic arms with aerial platforms for three-dimensional physical interaction. However, enlarging the workspace increases arm-induced disturbances, while existing geometric representations face a trade-off between geometric fidelity and computational efficiency in close-proximity interaction. This paper presents QuadHand, a compact quadrotor aerial manipulator with a 3-DoF arm, gripper, and battery-assisted passive CoG compensation module to reduce dominant arm-induced disturbances. We further propose MRC-SDF, a Multi-articulated Robot-Centric Signed Distance Field that preserves fine geometric detail with tractable computation, and a spatiotemporal whole-body trajectory optimization framework that jointly optimizes the quadrotor and manipulator for safe and executable trajectory generation. Simulations and real-world experiments demonstrate safe and executable aerial manipulation in complex environments.