Towards a Safer Built Environment Industry with Inverted Perching Aerial Robots

This paper presents an inverted perching mechanism designed for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) intended for fluid spraying applications in the construction industry. The perching mechanism incorporates rotary and prismatic joints, enabling the UAV to change its body orientation while in a perched state. To ensure the effective operation of the inverted perching approach, several challenges including impact absorption, thrust control, and UAV body rotation need to be addressed. To tackle these challenges, the paper proposes the utilization of a Fuzzy Logic Control (FLC) thrust controller and an optimization-based UAV positioning strategy. The combined operation of these control strategies with the perching mechanism improves the UAV's ceiling approach performance. Simulation and experimentation results demonstrate a relative increase in ±5° body rotation capability and a notable 17.65% improvement in impact absorption.