Human workers conducting inspection and maintenance (I&M) operations on high altitude infrastructures like power lines or industrial facilities face significant difficulties to get tools or devices once they are deployed on this kind of workspaces. In this sense, aerial manipulation robots can be employed to deliver quickly objects to the operator, considering long reach configurations to improve safety and the feeling of comfort for the operator during the handover. This paper presents a dual arm aerial manipulation robot in cable suspended configuration intended to conduct fast and safe aerial delivery, considering a human-centered approach relying on an on-board perception system in which the aerial robot accommodates its pose to he worker. Preliminary experimental results in an indoor testbed validate the proposed system design.
“Aerial Manipulation System for Safe Human-Robot Handover in Power Line Maintenance”
F.J. Gañán, A. Suarez, R. Tapia, J.R. Martínez-de Dios, and A. Ollero
Robotics: Science and Systems, Workshop on Close-Proximity Human-Robot Collaboration: Challenges and Opportunities, 2022.
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