Interaction Control of Platforms with Multi-directional Total Thrust

Abstract

The chapter introduces an interaction control framework for multi-directional total thrust platforms. When also fully-actuated, such platforms can modify the total wrench in body frame in any direction. Therefore, they do not suffer from the underactuation of standard collinear multirotors, and are best suited for dexterous tasks, physical interaction, and for carrying aerial manipulators. The chapter describes in order: a full-pose controller which takes into account the lateral limits of the total force; an algorithm for estimating the contract wrench; and an admittance-shaping framework for physical interaction. Experimental results with the TiltHex platform are also shown to validate the proposed methods.