A Novel Approach To Surface Operations With Multirotor UAVs

This video shows the indoor experimental evaluation of our latest aerial manipulation system which is capable of brushing surfaces. This is enabled by means of two innovations. The first innovation is a special tool that ‘drives’ over the surface using the friction generated by the interaction forces, while simultaneously applying a tool (here a brush) with a constant force on the surface using a spring. The second innovation is in the control theory, which stabilizes the UAV while allowing this movement. The experiment in the video shows how these innovations are applied to clean a patch on a surface, and is the validation step of the system before working on moving it outdoors towards the realistic scenario.