Design of the Interacting-BoomCopter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for Remote Sensor Mounting

This paper presents the design of the interacting-BoomCopter (I-BoomCopter) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for mounting a remote sensor package on a vertical surface. Critical to the design is the novel, custom, light-weight passive end effector. The end effector has a forward-facing sonar sensor and in-line force sensor to enable autonomous sensor mounting tasks. The I-BoomCopter's front boom is equipped with a horizontally mounted propeller, which can provide forward and reverse thrust with zero roll and pitch angles. The design and modeling of the updated I-BoomCopter platform is presented along with prototype flight test results. A teleoperated wireless camera sensor mounting task examines the updated platform's suitability for mounting remote sensor packages. Additionally, an autonomous control strategy for remote sensor mounting with the I-BoomCopter is proposed, and autonomous test flights demonstrate the efficacy of the approach.