Aerial manipulation for the workspace above the airframe

We describe an aerial robot equipped with an upward directed hand on top of a quadrotor airframe for realizing an aerial manipulation task at high altitude, considering a work space above the robot. The aerial robot in this study consists of a small quadrotor platform, a robotic hand module including a gripper and slider mechanism, and an embedded vision system. Positioning of the hand is autonomously performed through a vision-based control system. In this system, position and orientation of a bar-like object is measured and detected through a monocular camera image and FPGA-based on-board processing. Through experiments, the grasping of a bar located above the robot, keeping the grasp with shut off propellers and succeeding take off by releasing a bar was achieved.