EAPSI:Design of a Novel Balancing Mechanism to Improve Stable Flight of a Multirotor and Mounted Robotic Arm

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Communication and the accurate collection of data is critical to the success of first responders in their efforts to aid victims in the aftermath of both natural and man-made disasters. Often Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) are used to facilitate this information through aerial mapping of terrain, or by locating victims and potential hazards not immediately known to first responders in the field. Recently, multirotor UAS have been considered for use in manipulation and grasping tasks in the field. The inclusion of a robotic arm in the design greatly increases their utility in practice, and allows these machines to interact with their environments mid-flight. These interactions may be as simple as water sample collection or as complex as door opening, and while there are many advantages to the deployment of a UAS to perform these tasks, there are still many problems concerning stability in operation. The proposed work seeks to improve the effectiveness of these manipulation UAS through the design and analysis of a mechanism which would actively balance the platform while flying. Work concerning the design and implementation of the mechanism will be conducted at the Intelligent Robotics & Mechatronics System (IRMS) Laboratory of Sungkyunkwan University in Suwon, South Korea under the supervision of Professor Hyouk Ryeol Choi. The expertise of the IRMS Laboratory in manipulation platforms is an invaluable resource for the completion of this award, and this collaboration will lay the groundwork for future works between Sungkyunkwan University and the University of Nevada Las Vegas.Aerial manipulation using a multirotor UAS is challenging due to the limitations imposed on the platform?s stability by multirotor actuation modes. Indeed, a traditional multirotor is incapable of producing a couple to negate applied external torque. To maintain hover conditions during manipulation maneuvers, the design and implementation of a balancing mechanism will be explored to affect active stabilization of the platform. While the effects of the environment on the mounted manipulator?s end effector cannot be accounted for generally, the eccentricities introduced to the system?s center of gravity by the mass and moment of inertia of the manipulator can be reduced using the mechanism. It can be shown that this improves robustness of both static and dynamic flight, through analyses based on Lyapunov?s principles, simulation, and testing. This award under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the National Research Foundation of Korea.