Design of Lightweight Aerial Manipulator with a CoG Compensation Mechanism

This paper discusses the design and validation processes involved in the development of a lightweight aerial manipulator. The structure consists of 3D printed links with a counterweight on one end and a gripper on the other, its task is a pick and place operation. The manipulator is inspired from pantograph mechanism, which acts as a center of gravity (CoG) compensation active mechanism. This mechanism is intended to be attached beneath a drone or quadrotor to solve the CoG shifting problem during manipulator operation. An experimental test bench is developed to simulate real flying operations. The mechanism base tilting pitch angle during movement is obtained and compared both with and without the using of proposed aerial mechanism to validate the performance and stability of the quadrotor while used for pick and place applications.