Design of a Reusable Controller for Pushing Unliftable Objects Using a Multicopter

Abstract

Research on aerial manipulation, or the manipulation of objects using multicopters, has been attracting attention in recent years. Commonly, aerial manipulation is performed with a manipulator mounted on a multicopter. However, these research projects focus on manipulating objects which can be grasped and lifted. This research focuses on manipulating unliftable objects using a multicopter. With the proposed method, the multicopter pushes a target object. To push an object automatically, a physical model for the pushing motion is constructed. An attitude control part of an existing flight controller is reused for reducing the effort of implementing the controller. The pushing motion is achieved by controlling the attitude using the physical model. In the evaluation experiments, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified in simulation.