Teleoperation of a UAV by a 6-DOF parallel manipulator with hybrid mapping for inspection of industrial structures

Abstract

This paper presents modeling, simulation, and control of a teleoperated mechanism, where two non-isomorphic devices a parallel manipulator and an under-actuated unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) are integrated into a master-slave configuration. A Stuarts-type 6-DOF parallel manipulator is used as a master robot and a UAV is used as a slave robot. Since, the parallel manipulator has a limited task space, due to the fixed base, while the UAV has a practically unlimited workspace, direct space to space mapping is not possible between them. Therefore, a novel hybrid mapping mechanism has been proposed to integrate these two completely non-identical devices. This paper also describes the detailed dynamic modeling of the parallel manipulator and the UAV. Modeling of the parallel manipulator is derived by physics of the system while for the UAV, a method of system identification is used. The level of tracking accuracy presented in the simulation results verifies the efficacy of the system modeling, hybrid mapping, and overall control mechanism. Multilevel control architecture based on PID controllers, in local actuator joint spaces, for the master manipulator and the slave UAV is also presented in this work.