Coordinated Control of Flying Robotic Arm

In this paper, a flying vehicle with a robotic arm is addressed. The flying robotic arm, called UAVARM, is modeled as an integrated system comprising a small-scale unmanned, under-actuated aerial vehicle (UAV) and a revolute robotic manipulator which can have a fast and flexible maneuverability in space. The main concern for the combined system is to control the position and orientation of the end-effector of the UAVARM while collaboratively stabilizing the UAV body so that it can follow and track a desired trajectory. Success in solving the control design problem will allow the system to be used in remote dextrous applications such as replacing bulbs on a radio tower. Many control challenges exist due to the complexity of the system including that the UAV is underactuated, inherently unstable, and the interaction of the arm and the UAV. The novelty of this system is that UAVARM is the complete integration of the subsystem to function as a single entity — the subsystems are cooperatively controlled in the sense that spatial states such as position, attitude, and orientation are transferred or cumulated in an automated manner using homogeneous matrices to the end-effector in order to exactly control the flying arm. The closed-loop controller will control the trajectory-tracking of the end-effector while satisfying a Lyapunov-type stability of the integrated system, which yields an asymptotically stable tracking result in a given angle condition.