Aeroarms

The AEROARMS project poses complex mechatronics, control, telemanipulation perception and planning problems. Particularly, new mechatronic designs and control methods are needed to implement the aerial robots with several arms for grabbing and flying operations. Advanced control strategies with force and vision feedback are also required for manipulation. Also new coordinated control strategies of the multiple arms and the aerial platforms are needed. Moreover, new perception methods, with ability to adapt to changing illumination conditions, are required for accurate local mapping and localisation in denied GPS industrial environment, grabbing and manipulation, and integration of sensory data to help the operation of the crawler. On the other hand, planning is required to compute the required motions of the aerial robot for efficient and safe grabbing and manipulation taking into account the constraints imposed by the aerial robot and the environment, including motion planning for torque compensation, and for cooperation with the ground mobile robot. Moreover, reactive behaviours to increase safety, avoiding collisions with objects in the environment will be also implemented.

• Based on previous partner results, developing systems which are able to grab and dock with one or more arms and perform dexterous accurate manipulation with another arm. Also develop helicopter-based aerial manipulators, with greater payload and flight endurance, and with a dexterous arm to provide advanced manipulation capabilities by means of force interactions and hand-eye coordination using a movable camera with another light arm
• New methods and technologies for platforms which can fly and manipulate with the coordinated motion of the arms addressing constrained scenarios in which it is dangerous to use the helicopter and where it is not possible to grab to perform I&M operation.

• Installation and maintenance of permanent Non Destructive Tests (NDT) sensors on remote components such as pipe works, fire flares or structural components. This application assumes the existence of appropriate housing for the sensor to allow a mounted fixation by dexterous handling. The application involves the preparation of structures to install the sensors (drilling a hole into insulation, removing paint etc.), the installation of the sensors and the finishing of the structure.Deploying and maintaining a mobile robotic system permanently installed on a remote structure. Assuming the presence of a newly designed mobile robot allowing easy exchange and maintenance of components (e.g., batteries etc.), the application consists of the use of the aerial robot to maintain the robot permanently installed in the structure without costly and dangerous human operations.