Landing of a Multirotor Aerial Vehicle on an Uneven Surface Using Multiple On-board Manipulators

We describe the concept, design and implementation of a unique manipulator system for a multirotor aerial vehicle. The proposed manipulator system consists of three robotic arms attached to a multirotor airframe with the objective to provide the ability to manipulate single or multiple objects as well as aid in complex navigation tasks by doing contact based obstacle avoidance and acting as adaptive landing gear in uneven terrain. In this paper we primarily focus on the description and experimentation of one of the tasks achievable by the proposed aerial multi-manipulator system: landing a multirotor aerial vehicle on an uneven surface. Deploying the on-board manipulator as landing gears reduces the hardware carried by the vehicle while additionally providing the ability to land in unstructured and commonly difficult to land terrain.