Multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been increasingly used over the past decade in various applications, such as canopy sampling, branch cutting, powerline testing, and inspection of manufactured or natural structures. Many of these real-world applications require deliberate contact with an external object, which can destabilize the UAV. On the other hand, having coupled rotational and translational dynamics in underactuated UAVs is not desirable when making accurate physical contact. Meanwhile, fully-actuated UAVs can produce vectored thrust in the horizontal plane without tilting.
This project focuses on initially building a rotating arm attached to a fully actuated UAV. Then, the controller and its gains must be modified to maintain stability and accuracy when the arm rotates around its axis to perform the desired physical contact with an external object. Ideally, the real-time angle of the arm should affect the control gains to maintain stability during the free flight and contact.
Undergraduate
None
Motion Capture Lab (405.836E, Lab)