Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Unmanned aerial manipulators (UAMs) constitute an emerging technology that combines the versatility and agility of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with the precision and the dexterity of robotic arms. UAMs will meet the growing need for aerial manipulation in tasks that are costly, or hazardous, or even impossible for human operators. These platforms can foster advances in various fields such as service, assistance, and teleoperation, e.g., for material handling, inspection and maintenance of infrastructures, construction, search-and-rescue, emergency response, border reconnaissance, precision agriculture, demining, and geophysical research. Despite its substantial market and promises, UAM research has yet to address significant scientific challenges, limiting its current operations to simplified structured environments and, hence, leaving the majority of the related potential markets untapped. For transformational impact, new paradigms need to be established to develop UAMs that can adapt to uncertainties and operate autonomously and safely in unstructured environments. This program builds on our recently introduced aerial continuum manipulation paradigm in which the advantages of continuum manipulators (CMs) are integrated into UAMs to enable aerial physical interactions (APhIs) in uncertain and confined environments. However, many theoretical and practical aspects of aerial continuum manipulators (ACMs) and cooperative ACMs (CACMs) are remaining unexplored. We expect to make significant advancements in the foundations of ACMs through the proposed program objectives that include development and verification of: (1) accurate and efficient dynamic models; (2) robust and efficient vision-based state and interaction wrench estimation approaches; and (3) high-performance vision-based contact control and teleoperation strategies in unstructured and GPS-denied (GPSd) environments, for ACMs/CACMs. The proposed interdisciplinary research is expected to produce numerous cutting-edge, first-in-the-field contributions, including the first dynamic modeling, perception, and control techniques for APhIs of ACMs/CACMs, enabling many improved capabilities for UAMs, such as enhanced dexterity, compliance, robustness and safety of interactions in unstructured, confined, and GPSd environments. This program will lead to new research directions and benefit overlapping research areas in robotics (e.g., continuum robotics and aerial robotics), human-robot interaction, teleoperation, sensor fusion, control, AI, and autonomous systems. Research outcomes will also open up a host of new robotic applications design opportunities, fostering the continued growth of the key Canadian sectors in infrastructure/utilities, aerospace, service, defence/security, agriculture, manufacturing, construction, emergency response, and heavy industries, that could exploit the ACM technology.