A hardware-in-the-loop simulator for physical human-aerial manipulator cooperation

A hardware-in-the-loop simulator for human cooperation with an aerial manipulator is presented in this paper. The simulator provides the user with realistic haptic feedback proper of a human-aerial manipulator interaction activity. The forces exchanged between the hardware interface and the human/environment are measured and supplied to a dynamically simulated aerial manipulator. In turn, the simulated aerial platform feeds back its position to the hardware allowing the human to feel and evaluate the interaction effects. Besides human-aerial manipulator cooperation, the simulator lends itself to developing and testing autonomous control strategies in aerial manipulation. Therefore, the effectiveness of the proposed system is evaluated along with two case studies: a collaborative task where the human operator attaches a tool to the robot end-effector and an autonomous bird diverter installation task.