A lightweight, low-cost and self-diagnosing mechatronic jaw gripper for the aerial picking with unmanned aerial vehicles

Within recent years the gripping and manipulation of individual objects using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has become an area of broad scientific research as UAVs allow a fast and three-dimensional transportation of the grasped objects. However, currently there are neither standards for aerial gripping devices nor are there grippers available that are both lightweight and robust enough for the usage with drones and can provide the required feedback on whether the gripping process was successful. In this paper, we therefore present a lightweight, low-cost and self-diagnosing mechatronic jaw gripper for the application with autonomous UAVs. The gripper offers an energy-saving design and an integrated measurement system to detect whether an object was successfully grasped. To evaluate the performance of the gripper it is attached to a quadrotor and tested within different scenarios. The tests include the detection of successfully grasped or dropped out objects and the autonomous pickup and deposit. (C) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.