We present a novel pose and posture estimation framework of aerial skeleton system for outdoor flying. To exploit redundant/independent sensing while rendering the system “modular”, we attach an IMU (inertial measurement unit) sensor and a GNSS (global navigation satellite system) module on each link and perform SE(3)-motion EKF (extended Kalman filtering). We then apply the kinematic constraints of the aerial skeleton system to these EKF estimates of all the links through SCKF (smoothly constrained Kalman filtering), thereby, enforcing the kinematic coherency of the skeleton system and, consequently, significantly enhancing the estimation accuracy and the control performance/stability of the aerial skeleton system. A semi-distributed version of the obtained estimation framework is also presented to address the issue of scalability. The theory is then verified/demonstrated with real outdoor flying experiments and simulation studies of a three-link aerial skeleton system.

Electrical motor and hydraulic actuation widely-used in robotics are “internal actuation” with their actuators sitting at the joint between two links. This internal actuation is fundamentally limiting to construct a large-size dexterously-articulated robot, since any external force (and its own link weight) is to be accumulated to the base multiplied by the moment arm length, requiring extremely strong/sturdy base actuator/structure as the system size increases. In this paper, we propose a novel robotic system, LASDRA (large-size aerial skeleton with distributed rotor actuation), which, by utilizing distributed rotors as “external actuation”, can overcome this limitation of internal actuation and enables us to realize large-size dexterously-articulated robots. We present its design and modeling, joint locking strategy to increase its loading capability, and also a novel decentralized control scheme to allow for compliant operation with scalability against the number of links. Trajectory tracking and valve turning experiments are also performed to validate the theory.

We propose a novel robotic platform for aerial operation and manipulation, a spherically connected multiquadrotor (SmQ) platform, which consists of a rigid frame and multiple quadrotors that are connected to the frame via passive spherical joints and act as distributed rotating thrust generators to collectively propel the frame by adjusting their attitude and thrust force. Depending on the number of quadrotors and their configuration, this SmQ platform can fully (or partially) overcome the issues of underactuation of the standard multirotor drones for aerial operation/manipulation (e.g., body-tilting with sideway gust/force, dynamic interaction hard to attain, complicated arm-drone integration, etc.). We present the dynamics modeling of this SmQ platform system and establish the condition for its full actuation in SE(3). We also show how to address limited range of spherical joints and rotor saturations as a constrained optimization problem by noticing the similarity with the multifingered grasping problem under the friction-cone constraint. We then design and analyze feedback control laws for the S3Q and S2Q systems as a combination of high-level Lyapunov control design and low-level constrained optimization and show that the (fully actuated) S3Q system can assume any trajectory in SE(3), whereas the S2Q system in R3× S2with its unactuated dynamics is still internally stable. Experiments are also performed to show the efficacy of the theory.

We propose a novel multi-rotor flying platform, ODAR (omni-directional aerial robot), which is fully-actuated (i.e., can assume arbitrary motion in SE(3) or generate arbitrary control wrench in se(3)) by six opportunistically distributed rotors, each driven by reversible ESC (electronic speed controller) for bi-directional thrust generation. Due to this omni-directional wrench generation, the ODAR system can realize such powerful behaviors impossible with conventional multi-rotor flying platforms as: 360° photo/video shooting while holding its position for VR scene generation; or resisting sideway gust while keeping its attitude and exerting downward pushing force larger than its own weight for aerial manipulation applications. This paper presents optimal mechanical design, modeling and control, hardware and software implementation, and experimental verification of the ability of the ODAR system to attain those behaviors impossible with the conventional drones as stated above.

We propose a novel whole-body multi-modal semiautonomous teleoperation framework for mobile manipulator systems, which consists of: 1) Motion capture and whole-body motion mapping to allow the operator to intuitively teleoperate the mobile manipulator without being constrained by the master interface while also fully exploiting whole-body dexterity; 2) Slave robot autonomous control to allow the mobile manipulator to optimally track the operator's whole-body command, while taking into account the user-slave kinematic dissimilarity (slave robot's joint limit, joint velocity limit, and singularity); and 3) Visuo-haptic-vestibular feedback with HMD (Head Mounted Display) for 3D visual information, wearable cutaneous haptic device for manipulation force feedback, and actuated chair for vestibular feedback to reduce HMD-induced motion sickness. Performance of the proposed framework is validated with simulation of a ROV (remotely operated vehicle) manipulator system and some preliminary user studies.

We propose a new aerial tool operation system consisting of multiple quadrotors connected to a tool by spherical joints to perform tool operation tasks. We model the system and show that the attitude dynamics of each quadrotor is decoupled from the tool dynamics, so that we can consider the quadrotors as thrusters and control the tool by adjusting the orientation and magnitude of these thrusters. We also show that the 6-DOF tool dynamics could be under-actuated or fully-actuated, depending on the number of quadrotors attached to the tool and the geometric configuration of their attachments. We then design control laws for the tool-tip position/orientation tracking of the (under-actuated) tool system with two quadrotors and the (fully-actuated) tool system with three quadrotors. We use Lyapunov approach to find the desired thrust command for each quadrotor while also taking into account the spherical joint limits in a form of constrained optimization. Simulation and implementation results are performed to support the theory.

This paper presents some techniques used for data-driven haptic rendering of deformable object in two dimensional space considering multi-contact with 2-DOF virtual proxy. Torque and force data required for haptic rendering is calculated in advance by an iteration method. Bi-cubic interpolation is used in a haptic-loop and moving average filter is used in a graphics-loop, both of which is aimed at making smooth and realistic haptic interaction. We exploit discrete-time non-iterative passive mechanical integrator (NPMI) and hybrid-time passive virtual coupling for simulating virtual proxy to enhance passivity of the system. At last, we examined the quality of generated haptic interaction by PHANTOM Omni.