The Flying Hand: a Formation of UAVs for Cooperative Aerial Tele-Manipulation

TitleThe Flying Hand: a Formation of UAVs for Cooperative Aerial Tele-Manipulation
Publication TypeConference Paper
Year of Publication2014
AuthorsGioioso, G, Franchi, A, Salvietti, G, Scheggi, S, Prattichizzo, D
Conference Name2014 IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation
Pagination4335-4341
Date Published05/2014
Conference LocationHong Kong, China
KeywordsAerial Physical Interaction, Aerial Robotics, Bilateral Shared Control of Mobile Robots, Motion control of multiple robots
Abstract

The flying hand is a robotic hand consisting of a swarm of UAVs able to grasp an object where each UAV contributes to the grasping task with a single contact point at the tooltip. The swarm of robots is teleoperated by a human hand whose fingertip motions are tracked, e.g., using an RGB-D camera. We solve the kinematic dissimilarity of this unique master-slave system using a multi-layered approach that includes: a hand interpreter that translates the fingertip motion in a desired motion for the object to be manipulated; a mapping algorithm that transforms the desired object motions into a suitable set of virtual points deviating from the planned contact points; a compliant force control for the case of quadrotor UAVs that allows to use them as indirect 3D force effectors. Visual feedback is also used as sensory substitution technique to provide a hint on the internal forces exerted on the object. We validate the approach with several human-in-the-loop simulations including the full physical model of the object, contact points and UAVs.

Citation Key2014a-GioFraSalSchPra
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