Autonomous Door Opening With the Interacting-BoomCopter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

This paper presents the design of a light-weight, compliant end-effector and an image processing strategy that together enable the Interacting-BoomCopter (I-BC) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to perform an autonomous door-opening task. Autonomy is achieved through the use of feedback from an onboard camera for door detection & localization, and embedded force and distance sensors in the end-effector for detecting the physical interaction with the door. The results of several experimental flight tests are presented in which the end-effector and image processing strategy were deployed on the I-BC to successfully open a small enclosure door autonomously.