Aerial robots have garnered significant attention due to their potential applications in various industries, such as inspection, search and rescue, and drone delivery. Successful missions often depend on the ability of these robots to grasp and land effectively. This paper presents a novel modular soft gripper design tailored explicitly for aerial grasping and landing operations. The proposed modular pneumatic soft gripper incorporates a feed-forward proportional controller to regulate pressure, enabling compliant gripping capabilities. The modular connectors of the soft fingers offer two configurations for the 4-tip soft gripper, H-base (cylindrical) and X-base (spherical), allowing adaptability to different target objects. Additionally, the gripper can serve as a soft landing gear when deflated, eliminating the need for an extra landing gear. This design reduces weight, simplifies aerial manipulation control, and enhances flight efficiency. We demonstrate the efficacy of indoor aerial grasping and achieve a maximum payload of 217 g using the proposed soft aerial vehicle and its H-base pneumatic soft gripper (808 g).

翻译：空中机器人因其在检测、搜救、无人机配送等各行业的潜在应用而备受关注。成功完成任务往往依赖于这些机器人有效抓取和着陆的能力。本文提出了一种专门为空中抓取和着陆操作定制的新型模块化软体夹爪设计。所提出的模块化气动软体夹爪采用前馈比例控制器来调节压力，从而具备柔顺抓取能力。软体手指的模块化连接器为四指尖软体夹爪提供了两种配置：H型基座（圆柱形）和X型基座（球形），使其能够适应不同目标物体。此外，该夹爪在放气状态下可用作软体起落架，无需额外安装起落架。这种设计减轻了重量，简化了空中操纵控制，并提升了飞行效率。我们展示了室内空中抓取的有效性，并使用所提出的软体飞行器及其H型基座气动软体夹爪（总重808克）实现了217克的最大有效载荷。