Dynamic Modeling and Constrained Control of an Aerial Manipulator for Force Control in Interaction with an Environment of Unknown Stiffness

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Reza Ebrahimi

Mohammad Jafar Sadigh

Farzad Ayatollahzadeh Shirazi

School of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

10.22067/jacsm.2025.90706.1301

Abstract

Drones equipped with robotic arms are governed by nonlinear and complex equations. In this study, the dynamic model of a hexarotor equipped with a robotic arm with two degrees of freedom is first derived using the Euler-Lagrange method. Then, to enable interaction between this system and the environment, a controller is designed. To overcome underactuation issue, the system's dynamic equations are rewritten in such a way that some inputs are responsible for trajectory tracking and applying force by the robotic arm on the environment, while others are used to control the hexarotor's state. To control force and position at the end-effector, a combination of a "constrained force controller" and a position controller is employed. Finally, two applied missions are simulated in SimMechanics in the presence of wind disturbances. The simulation results are compared and acceptable performance of the system in interacting with both missions, in the presence of low-speed wind is shown.

Keywords

Aerial Robotic Arm

Multi-body System Modeling

Interaction with Unknown environments

Underactuation

Constrained Force Control

Subjects

• Control

---

References

[1]    M. Pedrocco, A. Pasetto, G. Fanti, A. Benato, and S. Cocuzza, “Trajectory Tracking Control of an Aerial Manipulator in the Presence of Disturbances and Model Uncertainties,” Applied Sciences, vol. 14, no. 6, p. 2512, 2024.  https://doi.org/10.3390/app14062512

[2] A. E. Jimenez-Cano, G. Heredia, and A. Ollero, “Aerial manipulator with a compliant arm for bridge inspection,” in 2017 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), 2017, pp. 1217–1222.  https://doi.org/10.1109/ICUAS.2017.7991458

[3] M. Brunner, G. Rizzi, M. Studiger, R. Siegwart, and M. Tognon, “A Planning-and-Control Framework for Aerial Manipulation of Articulated Objects,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 10689–10696, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2022.3191178

[4] H. W. Wopereis, J. J. Hoekstra, T. H. Post, G. A. Folkertsma, S. Stramigioli, and M. Fumagalli, “Application of substantial and sustained force to vertical surfaces using a quadrotor,” in 2017 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2017, pp. 2704–2709. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRA.2017.7989314

[5] S. Hamaza, I. Georgilas, and T. Richardson, “Towards an Adaptive-Compliance Aerial Manipulator for Contact- Based Interaction,” in 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2018, pp. 1–9.  https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2018.8593576

[6] Q. Liu, Y. Liu, Z. Chen, K. Guo, X. Yu, Y. Zhang, and L. Guo, “A compact aerial manipulator: Design and control for dexterous operations,” Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems, vol. 110, no. 2, p. 66, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-024-02090-7

[7] H. Paul, R. Miyazaki, T. Kominami, R. Ladig, and K. Shimonomura, “A Versatile Aerial Manipulator Design and Realization of UAV Take-Off from a Rocking Unstable Surface,” Applied Sciences, vol. 11, no. 19, 2021. https://doi.org/10.3390/app11199157

[8] G. Zhang, Y. He, B. Dai, F. Gu, J. Han, and G. Liu, “Robust Control of an Aerial Manipulator Based on a Variable Inertia Parameters Model,” IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, vol. 67, no. 11, pp. 9515–9525, 2020.  https://doi.org/10.1109/TIE.2019.2956414

[9] N. Sadeghzadeh Nokhodberiz, M. Iranshahi, and A. Montazeri, “Vision-based particle filtering for quad-copter attitude estimation using multirate delayed measurements,” Front Robot AI, vol. 10, 2023. https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2023.1090174

[10]         M. Aalipour, A. Mokhtarian, and H. Karimpour, “Nonlinear Control of Motion of A Spherical Robot on Inclined Surfaces Based on Feedback Linearization Method,” Journal Of Applied and Computational Sciences in Mechanics, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 91–104, 2020. https://doi.org/10.22067/fum-mech.v31i2.74433

[11]  M. Moussid, A. Sayouti, and H. Medromi, “Dynamic modeling and control of a hexarotor using linear and nonlinear methods,” International Journal of Applied Information Systems, vol. 9, pp. 9–17, 2015. https://doi.org/10.5120/ijais2015451411

[12]  J. J. Craig, Introduction to Robotics: Mechanics and Control, 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ, USA: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005.

[13]  J. Angeles, Fundamentals of Robotic Mechanical Systems: Theory, Methods, and Algorithms, 4th ed. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01851-5