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arXiv · 2503.20754

Flying Vines: Design, Modeling, and Control of a Soft Aerial Robotic Arm

Rianna Jitosho·Crystal E. Winston·Shengan Yang·Jinxin Li·Maxwell Ahlquist·Nicholas John Woehrle·C. Karen Liu·Allison M. Okamura
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Abstract

Aerial robotic arms aim to enable inspection and environment interaction in otherwise hard-to-reach areas from the air. However, many aerial manipulators feature bulky or heavy robot manipulators mounted to large, high-payload aerial vehicles. Instead, we propose an aerial robotic arm with low mass and a small stowed configuration called a "flying vine". The flying vine consists of a small, maneuverable quadrotor equipped with a soft, growing, inflated beam as the arm. This soft robot arm is underactuated, and positioning of the end effector is achieved by controlling the coupled quadrotor-vine dynamics. In this work, we present the flying vine design and a modeling and control framework for tracking desired end effector trajectories. The dynamic model leverages data-driven modeling methods and introduces bilinear interpolation to account for time-varying dynamic parameters. We use trajectory optimization to plan quadrotor controls that produce desired end effector motions. Experimental results on a physical prototype demonstrate that our framework enables the flying vine to perform high-speed end effector tracking, laying a foundation for performing dynamic maneuvers with soft aerial manipulators.

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Rianna Jitosho, Crystal E. Winston, Shengan Yang, Jinxin Li, Maxwell Ahlquist, Nicholas John Woehrle, C. Karen Liu, Allison M. Okamura. 2025-03-26. Flying Vines: Design, Modeling, and Control of a Soft Aerial Robotic Arm. https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.20754

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