An Adaptive Dual-Docking Force Control of Ship-Borne Manipulators for UAV-Assisted Perching

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) recovery is an important technology of unmanned systems for remote water surface active detection. The lack of resisting deck disturbances capability for UAV autonomous perching in dynamic unstructured environments has led to the inability of traditional hovering recovery methods for single UAV guidance and flight attitude control systems to meet the growing demand for perching assistance. From the perspective of humanoid grasping UAV behavior, this work conducts research on adaptive dual-docking force control of ship-borne manipulator for UAV-assisted perching based on flexible disturbance compensation. Firstly, analyzing the disturbance mechanism of wind, wave, and current composite flow fields, and establishing a rigid-flexible coupling dynamic model of the ship-borne manipulator system; and then clarifying the force/position compensation decoupling mechanism under bounded multiple disturbance sources, and propose the end-effector stability control method of the ship-borne manipulator based on auto disturbance attenuation variable impedance. The proposed dual-docking force control approach can effectively solve the problem of deck disturbance, assist in improving the safety of UAV autonomous recovery and perching, and promote the development of boat/aircraft cooperation technology toward more complex application scenarios.