Shin, Han-ryung (Seoul National University of Science and Technology), Song, Yeong In (Seoul National University of Science and Technology), Choi, Yujin (Seoul National University of Science and Technology), Lee, Seung Jae (Seoul National University of Science and Technology)

Robust Flight Control of Reconfigurable Inchworm Aerial Manipulator with Online Center of Mass Estimation

Scheduled for presentation during the Regular Session "Special Topics in Robotic Systems" (WeCT5), Wednesday, July 16, 2025, 17:30−17:50, Room 109

Joint 10th IFAC Symposium on Mechatronic Systems and 14th Symposium on Robotics, July 15-18, 2025, Paris, France

This information is tentative and subject to change. Compiled on July 16, 2025

Abstract

This paper introduces a new paradigm of reconfigurable aerial manipulators, named “Inchworm Aerial Manipulator.” This system utilizes an inchworm-inspired robot capable of repositioning its base joint by itself while operating as an aerial manipulator. For the flight platform, we employed the Palletrone, a fully-actuated multirotor that provides thrust vectoring. Utilizing these hardware configurations, the inchworm robot can reconfigure the aerial manipulator’s morphology dynamically, facilitating a wide range of tasks across various configurations. A critical challenge arises from the center-of-mass (CoM) shift induced by the locomotion of the inchworm robot along the multirotor’s surface, leading to potential instability and degraded flight performance. To address this, we propose a robust control algorithm, a disturbance observer (DOB) and a novel CoM estimator based on the DOB. The integrated structure is designed to reject external disturbances through the DOB and dynamic changes through the CoM estimator. This proposed flight control algorithm ensures robust flight performance for the inchworm aerial manipulator even during self-reconfiguration.