Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are often used for surveillance and reconnaissance missions. They typically fly high above the ground to avoid obstacles. As such, they execute such missions passively. This project adds dexterous arms to a UAV. This would yield paradigm-shifting missions; the arms could then be used for near-Earth environment tasks like infrastructure repair, agricultural crop handling and border inspection. The critical gap preventing the realization of such UAVs is the lack of data on reaction forces and torques. When the arms on such vehicles (dubbed Mobile Manipulating UAVs or MM-UAV) interact with objects like building edifices, trees and common objects on the ground, these reactions can upset vehicle stability. The new infrastructure built by this project fills this gap. Robotic arms/hands is retrofitted and on existing 6-DOF gantry that is configured to mimic the UAV?s lateral and longitudinal dynamics. The net effect is a hardware-in-the-loop system that enables capture and study of reaction forces and torques.
Broader impacts resulting from such infrastructure include: data to analytically design MM-UAV to yield a new class of unmanned aircraft suitable for near-Earth missions; international collaborations that spinout results to industrial partners; hands-on lab components to complement robotics courses; and Girl Scouts outreach programs to inspire and motivate young girls to science and engineering. Dissemination includes the open sharing of data and publishing in the literature. The outcome of the project is a new class of UAV for field and service robotics with a wide range of missions.
