Grasping Low-Altitude Drones Technology for Shipborne UAV Charging Stations

We present the first manipulator arm designed for charging shipborne drones that utilize low-altitude visual servo grasp-docking their UAV to land on the water surface. The manipulator arm is fabricated as a key component of a seaplane drone station comprising a ship-type embedded drone storage, a packaged helistop for power transfer and UAV recovery, and a multi-degree-of-freedom arm integrated multi-source information sensors for the treatment of air to a water-related airplane crash. Dynamics model tests have demonstrated that the end-effector of the shipborne manipula-tor arm stabilizes and performs optimally for water surface disturbances. A down-to-top grasp docking paradigm for a UAV-assisted perching on shipborne helistop that enables the charging components of the station system to be equipped automatically to ensure that the drone performs its mission in the best condition is also presented. The efficacy of this grasp paradigm when compared with a previous top-to-down model without power recovery has been verified by retrieving vessels in the military fields.