A Motion Decoupled Aerial Robotic Manipulator for Better Inspection

For conventional aerial manipulators, the robotic arm is rigidly attached to the quadrotor. Consequently, the maneuver of the quadrotor will affect the motion of the robotic arm when it is used for tasks such as inspection. In this paper, we propose a novel aerial manipulator with a self-locking gimbal system which can switch between motion coupled and decoupled mode. Furthermore, a dynamic gravity compensation mechanism is designed, where the location of the battery and the number of teeth are optimized to minimize the weight imbalance of the robotic arm during its motions. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first aerial manipulator with a motion-decoupled mechanism. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed manipulator design can significantly improve the performance of the manipulator for general inspection tasks.