Magnetic Flux Servoing for Precise Localization Based on Gradient Tensor Contractions

This paper focuses on bridge inspections performed by intelligent unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). For this, small data loggers are placed by the UAVs at the bridge, which have to be removed later. In our previous work we presented the magnetic localization method SRIOD, which not only detects the center of the data logger but also its orientation. In this work we proof SRIOD in a real application and let a robotic arm locate a magnetic target. The hardware involved is presented including the control strategy for the robot. The motions of the robot and the magnetic target are captured with 12 Optitrack cameras in order to validate the localization quality.