Multi-UAV testbed for aerial manipulation applications

This paper addresses the development and implementation of a testbed for object´s manipulation by using unmanned aerial vehicles AR.Drone and the VICON Cameras System. Such testbed allows the user to choose among two development environments to perform aerial manipulation establishing a communication with LabVIEW, ROS and the C++ Qt library; thus, the user can employ the development environment more suitable for his application. This testbed allows us to establish communication between a computer and the A.R. Drone (v1 or v2) via a WiFi connection which sends and receives data using the communication protocol UDP and sockets for connection with the vehicle UDP ports. This platform sends control and navigation commands to the UAVs in order to position them in the space with user interaction by means of a graphical user interface. This testbed enables the implementation of more complex applications, such as complex controllers. In addition, to validate the effectiveness of this testbed, experimental results of aerial manipulation between two quadrotors are presented.