Coordinated active perception and manipulation of a payload with unknown center-of-mass location

Abstract

We propose a coordinated active perception and manipulation strategy to enable a team of aerial robots to estimate the location of the center-of-mass (COM) of an object in order to enable cooperative aerial manipulation and transport. We pursue representative scenarios such as rubble removal and package delivery in the contexts of disaster response and logistics, respectively, where the total payload mass may exceed the lift capacity of individual aerial systems and the payload density distribution is not readily modeled as uniform. Fig. 1 provides a graphical overview of the proposed methodology depicting a team of small rotorcraft approaching and attaching to an object via a tether on a planar surface. A single robot attaches to the object and applies a wrench. Based on the outcome of the wrench application, a second system deploys to an appropriately chosen attachment point before similarly
applying a wrench. The process is iteratively repeated until the object COM is accurately estimated.