A Comparative Study of Real-Time Implementable Cooperative Aerial Manipulation Systems

Research and development in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) has witnessed unprecedented scientific and commercial interest and growth, particularly during the last two decades. Although military applications dominated the global market for years, interest in using UAVs in civil and public domains increases exponentially, worldwide, albeit challenges related to integrating unmanned aviation into the national airspace. Sample applications include, but are not limited to, surveillance [1], search and rescue [2], aerial photography [3], fire monitoring [4], agriculture [5], and aerial delivery [6]. The listed applications refer to solely passive tasks, that is, tasks in which no UAV interaction with the environment is needed. However, contact with the environment is required in industrial and maintenance applications like bridge inspection, water damn inspection, high-voltage transmission line inspection [7], assembly tasks [8] or construction [9].