Vision-Guided Morphing Quadcopter for Multi-Geometry Payload Transport through Narrow Passages

Abstract:Aerial payload transport using multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles is challenging because payload geometry, contact interaction, grasp stability, flight control, and narrow-passage traversal are strongly coupled during pickup and transport. Object-specific grippers often cannot adapt their footprint or grasp geometry when the payload shape or passage width changes. This paper presents a vision-guided morphing quadcopter for multi-geometry payload transport through narrow passages. The proposed platform uses four hybrid arm-leg structures that function as both landing supports and grasping members. A centrally placed actuator drives a tendon-based morphing mechanism, enabling all four arms to synchronously retract or expand for object grasping, footprint reduction, and post-transport release. Onboard vision estimates the payload geometry and passage width, while endpoint force feedback is used to confirm grasp contact during payload engagement. A phase-wise mission planner, PID-based flight stabilization, and morphology-adaptive grasp controller are implemented in a MuJoCo simulation environment. The framework is evaluated using box, cylindrical, and spherical payloads, representing flat-faced, rolling-curved, and fully curved contact conditions. Across the three cases, the simulated system completes the pickup-transport-release sequence with a maximum RMS position error of 0.31 m, a final drop-zone error below 0.18 m, a compact grasp footprint of 0.09-0.21 m2, and a footprint reduction of 75.0-89.7 percent. The results demonstrate that a single-actuator morphing quadcopter can adapt its grasp footprint for the transport of payloads with different geometries while reducing its overall footprint for narrow-passage traversal.

Robotics (cs.RO)

arXiv:2608.21879 [cs.RO]

(or arXiv:2608.21879v1 [cs.RO] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.21879 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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