UROP Openings

Rotor-flying manipulation simulation - using MATLAB and Simulink

Project Description

Rotor-flying manipulators are Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) equipped with a lightweight manipulator and have the potential to transform major industries thanks to their unconstrained 3D motion; making them ideal for deployment in cluttered environments. Rotor-flying manipulation is a natural evolution of mobile manipulation and a popular research area in robotics that attracts the interest of many companies and public institutions. Its applications range from aerial transportation in construction, manipulations in hazardous places, inspections and installations on sites with a difficult access, search and rescue, and more. Autonomous aerial manipulation is a challenging problem because of the coupled dynamics. The project objectives are to: Develop an autonomous aerial manipulation simulation including a UAV equipped with a multi-DoF manipulator to pick an object and place it into a goal location. Pose estimation and perception of the environment will be developed using a visual system. Global motion planning with obstacle avoidance will allow the system to reach the target location to approach and pick an object and eventually place it into a goal location. Impact: The project is of broad interest to diverse companies, including those in delivery of medical and consumer goods. Of interest: https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/68788-robotics-system-toolbox-uav-library https://www.mathworks.com/help/robotics/examples/pick-and-place-workflow-using-stateflow.html This is an ongoing project students would join a current team. We encourage sharing the project openly: Create or use your personal GitHub repository to share your solution publicly. Submit your solution under an open-source BSD-3 or MIT license.

Pre-requisites

Experience and/or interest in system and dynamics modeling, simulation