Dexterous aerial robot achieves precise grasping of moving small objects
CAPTURER: A Dexterous Aerial Manipulator for Dynamic and Precise Grasping across Diverse Environments
Robotics
Summary
Grasping objects with flying robots is hard, especially when targets move quickly or conditions change. The authors created CAPTURER, a flying robot with a clever arm and camera system that can catch tiny, fast-moving things with centimeter-level precision. It combines careful motion planning, accurate sensing, and disturbance control to do this in indoor and outdoor settings. This system shows how robots can interact with objects dynamically from the air more effectively.
What this means in practice
- •For drone operators: Enable drones to grasp and retrieve small, moving objects reliably in changing environments.
- •For warehouse automation teams: Use aerial manipulators to pick items from shelves or bins where items or robots move dynamically.
Authors
Meng Wang, Jindou Jia, Sicheng Zhou, Zeshuai Chen, Kexin Guo, Xiang Yu, Lei Guo
Abstract
As a representative form of embodied robotic interaction, aerial grasping requires close coordination between the aerial platform and manipulator. Most existing systems perform aerial grasping with static or slowly moving targets under fixed scenarios. Dynamic and precise grasping across different conditions introduces additional challenges, including target motion, localization drift, dynamic coupling, and external disturbances. In this work, we present CAPTURER, a dexterous aerial manipulator for centimeter-level grasping across diverse environments. To achieve the challenging goal, we first develop an onboard perception system for state estimation and target detection. Drift correction and global pose transformation are introduced to improve target localization during flight. A cooperative motion planner is proposed to coordinate the mobility of the aerial platform with the dexterity of the manipulator according to the relative target state. To maintain grasping accuracy under disturbances, we design a disturbance-rejection controller to compensate for dynamic coupling, model uncertainty, and external disturbances. The capability of CAPTURER is validated through indoor and outdoor experiments with both static and moving targets. The results demonstrate that CAPTURER achieves centimeter-level grasping accuracy for a marker pen measuring only 1.5 cm in diameter at flight speeds exceeding 1.5 m/s.