Achieving Stable and Safe Physical Interaction for a Fully Actuated Aerial Robot using Energy Tank-Based Interaction Control

Using aerial robots for interacting with the environment is an active field of research. It lies in the overlap between UAV and interaction control research. Impedance control is a widely used technique in interaction control. However, it lacks the capability of regulating the interaction wrench with the environment. This can be achieved by modulating the stiffness ( gains) of the impedance controller, however this results in losing passivity. Energy Tanks, a concept introduced in Passivity-Based Control, can be used to restore the passivity of the system. Moreover it can allow the aerial robot to have safe behavior in the case of contact-loss with the environment. The assignment will be to augment an aerial hexarotor robot with impedance controller with Energy Tanks to achieve robust interaction with the environment. The developed control system will be validated in simulation and experiment within the platform available in RAM.