Long-Reach Aerial Manipulation Employing Wire-Suspended Hand With Swing-Suppression Device

We herein propose a long-reach aerial manipulator to allow the manipulation of objects several meters away from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The system consists of a multirotor platform with winch mechanism and wire-suspended gripper module equipped with a camera and swing-suppression device. The winch controls the distance of the wire-suspended device from the UAV. To stabilize the device suspended from the UAV by two wires, we developed a swing-suppression device using an IMU and ducted fans. Through experiments, we verified effectiveness of the swing-suppression system; that is, it successfully stabilized the wire-suspended device within a distance of 3.5 m from the UAV. Furthermore, we performed a pick-and-place task using a gripper that was lowered from the UAV by 3 m.