TY - JOUR
T1 - Localization, Grasping, and Transportation of Magnetic Objects by a Team of MAVs in Challenging Desert-Like Environments
AU - Loianno, Giuseppe
AU - Spurny, Vojtech
AU - Thomas, Justin
AU - Baca, Tomas
AU - Thakur, Dinesh
AU - Hert, Daniel
AU - Penicka, Robert
AU - Krajnik, Tomas
AU - Zhou, Alex
AU - Cho, Adam
AU - Saska, Martin
AU - Kumar, Vijay
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received September 11, 2017; accepted January 13, 2018. Date of publication January 31, 2018; date of current version February 27, 2018. This letter was recommended for publication by Associate Editor F. Ruggiero and Editor J. Roberts upon evaluation of the reviewers’ comments. This work was supported in part by the Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Challenge, in part by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory under Grant W911NF-08-2-0004, in part by the Office of Naval Research under Grants N00014-07-1-0829 and N00014-14-1-0510, in part by the Army Research Office under Grant W911NF-13-1-0350, in part by the National Science Foundation under Grants IIS-1426840 and IIS-1138847, in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Grants HR001151626 and HR0011516850, in part by the czech technical university (CTU) under Grant SGS17/187/OHK3/3T/13, in part by the czech science foundation (CSF) project 17-16900 Y, in part by the CESNET project, and in part by the CSF project 17-27006Y. G. Loianno, V. Spurny, J. Thomas, T. Baca, D. Thakur, D. Hert, and R. Penicka contributed equally to this letter. (Corresponding author: Giuseppe Loianno.) G. Loianno, J. Thomas, D. Thakur, D. Hert, A. Zhou, A. Cho, and V. Kumar are with the GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA (e-mail: loiannog@seas.upenn.edu; jut@seas.upenn.edu; tdinesh@seas.upenn.edu; hertdani@fel.cvut.cz; alexzhou@seas.upenn.edu; acho@seas.upenn.edu; kumar@seas.upenn.edu).
Funding Information:
This work was supported in part by the Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Challenge, in part by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory under Grant W911NF-08-2-0004, in part by the Office of Naval Research under Grants N00014-07- 1-0829 and N00014-14-1-0510, in part by the Army Research Office under Grant W911NF-13-1-0350, in part by the National Science Foundation under Grants IIS-1426840 and IIS-1138847, in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Grants HR001151626 and HR0011516850, in part by the czech technical university (CTU) under Grant SGS17/187/OHK3/3T/13, in part by the czech science foundation (CSF) project 17-16900 Y, in part by the CESNET project, and in part by the CSF project 17-27006Y. G. Loianno, V. Spurny, J. Thomas, T. Baca, D. Thakur, D. Hert, and R. Penicka contributed equally to this letter.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 IEEE.
PY - 2018/7
Y1 - 2018/7
N2 - Autonomous Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) have the potential to assist in real-life tasks involving grasping and transportation, but not before solving several difficult research challenges. In this work, we address the design, control, estimation, and planning problems for cooperative localization, grasping, and transportation of objects in challenging outdoor scenarios. We demonstrate an autonomous team of MAVs able to plan safe trajectories for manipulation of ferrous objects, while guaranteeing interrobot collision avoidance and automatically creating a map of the objects in the environment. Our solution is predominantly distributed, allowing the team to pick and transport ferrous disks to a final destination without collisions. This result is achieved using a new magnetic gripper with a novel feedback approach, enabling the detection of successful grasping. The gripper design and all the components to build a platform are clearly provided as open-source hardware for reuse by the community. Finally, the proposed solution is validated through experimental results, where difficulties include inconsistent wind, uneven terrain, and sandy conditions.
AB - Autonomous Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) have the potential to assist in real-life tasks involving grasping and transportation, but not before solving several difficult research challenges. In this work, we address the design, control, estimation, and planning problems for cooperative localization, grasping, and transportation of objects in challenging outdoor scenarios. We demonstrate an autonomous team of MAVs able to plan safe trajectories for manipulation of ferrous objects, while guaranteeing interrobot collision avoidance and automatically creating a map of the objects in the environment. Our solution is predominantly distributed, allowing the team to pick and transport ferrous disks to a final destination without collisions. This result is achieved using a new magnetic gripper with a novel feedback approach, enabling the detection of successful grasping. The gripper design and all the components to build a platform are clearly provided as open-source hardware for reuse by the community. Finally, the proposed solution is validated through experimental results, where difficulties include inconsistent wind, uneven terrain, and sandy conditions.
KW - Aerial systems: applications
KW - field robots
KW - swarms
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85051814668&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85051814668&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/LRA.2018.2800121
DO - 10.1109/LRA.2018.2800121
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85051814668
SN - 2377-3766
VL - 3
SP - 1576
EP - 1583
JO - IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
JF - IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
IS - 3
ER -