Control Software Architecture for Cooperative Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-Manipulator Systems

In this paper a Control software Architecture for cooperative multiple unmanned aerial Vehicle-manIpulator Systems (CAVIS) is presented. In particular, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) equipped with a robotic manipulator eventually involved in a cooperative object transportation mission are considered. Such robotic systems involve specific constraints given by the interaction of the degrees of freedom of the arms; for example, obstacle avoidance, joint limits, kinematic singularities need to be properly handled together with the main objective of controlling the arm’s end-effector to transport the object. To this end, a proper behavioral approach has been tailored and implemented with the aim to provide modularity and flexibility of use to the architecture. A case study shows the performance of the proposed software architecture.