Modeling and Application of an SMA-Actuated Lightweight Human-Inspired Gripper for Aerial Manipulation

The increasing usage of multi-rotor aerial platforms and the reliability of flights enabled researchers to add equipment and devices to them for application. The addition of lightweight manipulators, grippers, and mechanisms to fulfill specific tasks has been reported frequently recently. This work pushes the idea one step ahead and uses an Artificial Human Hand (AHH) in an uncrewed aerial vehicle for aerial manipulation, device delivery, and co-operation with human workers. This application requires an effective end-effector capable of grasping and holding objects of different shapes. The AHH is a lightweight custom-made human-inspired design actuated using Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) materials. The SMA actuators offer significantly high forces with respect to their light weights though the control of these new actuators is a challenge that has been successfully demonstrated in this paper. The control of the SMA actuators could be achieved via heat exchange on the actuator, indirectly carried out by changing the current. The benefit of using this new actuator is removing the motors and mechanical mechanisms and simplifying the design. A soft cover is developed for the AHH to add friction and make it closer to a human hand. The modeling of the structured actuators on the system through tendons is presented, and a series of experiments for handling and manipulating different objects have been conducted. The objects were chosen with different weights and shapes to show the effectiveness of the design. An analysis of a generated torque of the manipulator for different cylindrical objects has been carried out. An analysis and comparison for grasping a series of items, pressure and temperature analysis, and the weight-to-volume ratio have been presented.