Can UAV and UGV be best buddies? Towards heterogeneous aerial-ground cooperative robot system for complex aerial manipulation tasks

This paper presents the results of our efforts to build a heterogeneous robotic system capable of executing complex disaster response and recovery tasks. We aim to explore high level task scheduling and mission planning algorithms that enable various types of robots to cooperate together, utilizing each others strengths to yield a symbiotic robotic system. In the proposed scenario, a ground vehicle and an aerial robot work together to close a valve in a disaster stricken industrial environment. To that end we use TÆMS framework in order to specify interrelationships between mission subtasks and develop an effective scheduling and coordination mechanism, inspired by Generalized Partial Global Planning. We present simulation results with two different outcomes that show cooperative capabilities of the system.