Human workers conducting inspection and maintenance (I&M) operations on high altitude infrastructures like power lines or industrial facilities face significant difficulties getting tools or devices once they are deployed on this kind of workspaces. In this sense, aerial manipulation robots can be employed to deliver quickly objects to the operator, considering long reach configurations to improve safety and the feeling of comfort for the operator during the handover. This paper presents a dual arm aerial manipulation robot in cable suspended configuration intended to conduct fast and safe aerial delivery, considering a human-centered approach relying on an on-board perception system in which the aerial robot accommodates its pose to the worker. Preliminary experimental results in an indoor testbed validate the proposed system design.

This work was supported by the EU project H2020 AERIAL-CORE (871479). Partial funding was obtained from the Spanish Project ROBMIND (PDC2021-121524-I00) and the Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación of the Ministerio de Universidades del Gobierno de España (FPU19/04692).