Autonomous Grasping Robotic Aerial System For Perching (Agrasp)

This paper presents an autonomous perching concept for multirotor aerial vehicles. The Autonomous Grasping Robotic Aerial System for Perching (AGRASP) represents a novel integration of robotics perception, vision-based path planning, and biomimetically-inspired manipulation on a small, lightweight aerial robot with highly-constrained sensor and processing capacity. Computationally lightweight perception algorithms pull candidate perch structures out of a complex environment with no a priori knowledge of the operational space. The innovative manipulator design combines both active grasp and passive grip enabling it to maintain hold on the perch even with all power off. We experimentally demonstrate, for the first time, a quadrotor autonomously detecting and landing on a perch relying solely on onboard sensing and processing.