Intelligent Explosive Ordnance Disposal UAV System Based on Manipulator and Real-Time Object Detection

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has a broad application prospect in explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) operations, due to the excellent mobility in complex terrain. In this paper, an intelligent air-to-ground EOD system based on a multi-rotor UAV platform with a mechanical manipulator device is proposed. The detection of grenade models in complex environments is achieved by using a gimbaled camera, which adopts the object detection method based on Yolov3-tiny framework. The mechanical manipulator is composed of a 4-DoF robotic arm and a terminal flexible gripper, which is designed to achieve visual-based manipulation. The configuration can adjust pose autonomously to get close to the target and adaptively grasp objects of different physical characteristics. The proposed system is verified by grenade detection tests and grasping experiment in outdoor environment.