Bilateral haptic teleoperation of VTOL UAVs
This paper presents an intuitive teleoperation scheme to safely operate a wide range of VTOL UAVs by an untrained user in a cluttered environment. This scheme includes a novel force-feedback algorithm that enables the user to feel the texture of the environment. In addition, a novel mapping function is introduced to teleoperate the UAV in an unlimited workspace in position control mode with a joystick which has a limited workspace. An obstacle avoidance strategy is designed to autonomously modify the position set point of the UAV independently of the pilot's commands. The stability analysis of the whole teleoperation loop is provided. Experiments demonstrate the successful teleoperation of a UAV using an haptic joystick and a hexacopter UAV equipped with a 2D laser-range scanner.