An Aerial Manipulator for Robot-to-Robot Torch-Relay Task: System Design and Control Scheme

Torch relay is an important tradition of the Olympics and heralds the start of the games. Robots applied in the torch-relay activity can not only demonstrate the technological capability of humans to the world but also provide a sight of human lives with robots in the future. This article presents an aerial manipulator designed for the robot-to-robot torch-relay task of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. This aerial manipulator system is composed of a quadrotor, a 3 degree of freedom (DoF) manipulator, and a monocular camera. This article primarily describes the system design and system control scheme of the aerial manipulator. The experimental results demonstrate that it can complete a robot-to-robot torch-relay task under the guidance of vision in the ice and snow field.