Autonomous Aerial Manipulation at Arbitrary Pose in SE(3) with Robust Control and Whole-body Planning

2025-08-27

AI Summary

Conventional multirotors suffer from base underactuation, permitting stable hovering only at small roll/pitch angles—severely constraining their operational workspace and task capability. This work introduces an omnidirectional flying manipulator system that achieves, for the first time, stable hovering and dexterous manipulation with the flight base at arbitrary 6-DOF poses in SE(3) space. Methodologically, we integrate a differential-geometric robust attitude controller with a two-stage optimization-based whole-body motion planning framework—incorporating non-convex, non-Euclidean search spaces—to jointly ensure high-fidelity attitude regulation, collision-free trajectory generation, and real-time responsiveness. Experimental results demonstrate autonomous execution of complex aerial manipulation tasks—including grasping and pulling—at extreme pitch angles ranging from near 90° to 180°, thereby substantially expanding the operational degrees of freedom and task applicability of multirotor systems.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Manipulation
• Multiagent Systems: Multiagent Planning
• Humans and AI: Human-Aware Planning and Behavior Prediction

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Applied ML and AI for Web-based mobile applications
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Agentic search

Abstract

Aerial manipulators based on conventional multirotors can conduct manipulation only in small roll and pitch angles due to the underactuatedness of the multirotor base. If the multirotor base is capable of hovering at arbitrary orientation, the robot can freely locate itself at any point in $mathsf{SE}(3)$, significantly extending its manipulation workspace and enabling a manipulation task that was originally not viable. In this work, we present a geometric robust control and whole-body motion planning framework for an omnidirectional aerial manipulator (OAM). To maximize the strength of OAM, we first propose a geometric robust controller for a floating base. Since the motion of the robotic arm and the interaction forces during manipulation affect the stability of the floating base, the base should be capable of mitigating these adverse effects while controlling its 6D pose. We then design a two-step optimization-based whole-body motion planner, jointly considering the pose of the floating base and the joint angles of the robotic arm to harness the entire configuration space. The devised two-step approach facilitates real-time applicability and enhances convergence of the optimization problem with non-convex and non-Euclidean search space. The proposed approach enables the base to be stationary at any 6D pose while autonomously carrying out sophisticated manipulation near obstacles without any collision. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework through experiments in which an OAM performs grasping and pulling of an object in multiple scenarios, including near $90^circ$ and even $180^circ$ pitch angles.

Problem

• Enabling aerial manipulators to operate at arbitrary 3D orientations
• Developing robust control for stability during manipulation interactions
• Creating real-time whole-body motion planning for obstacle avoidance

Innovation

• Geometric robust control for floating base
• Two-step optimization-based whole-body motion planning
• Omnidirectional aerial manipulation at arbitrary 6D poses