An Experimental Study of Downwash Effects on a Continuum Manipulator Integrated with a Multirotor UAV

Published August 20, 2026 · Category: Robotics

Overview

arXiv:2608.18507v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Continuum arm aerial manipulation systems leverage soft-manipulator compliance and dexterity for tasks in confined or hazardous environments, but propeller downwash can degrade performance, particularly near walls and the ground. This effect remains uncharacterized for continuum manipulators. This letter experimentally studies downwash-induced kinematic deviations of a tendon-driven continuum manipulator integrated with a multirotor platform. Under still-air conditions, the CM is compared with a constant-curvature (CC) model. Downwash- induced end-effector pose deviations are then quantified relative to the mean still-air experimental baseline at four propeller throttle levels in free space, and at maximum throttle near a wall, and near the ground. Vertical position and yaw show the largest deviations and are amplified by ground effect. A CC-guided Gaussian process regression (GPR) residual model is learned from experimental data that improves forward pose prediction RMSE (position by 89-95%, orientation by 47-79%), and support compensation-oriented, downwash-aware modeling of continuum arm aerial manipulation systems.

Source

Originally published at arxiv.org.

Related Articles

• Scheduling and Routing with Degradation-Triggered Job Arrivals: An Application to Forest Firefighting with an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Fleet
• GAPL: Grounded Action-effect Policy Learning for LLM-Based Trajectory Planning
• Transferable Tool-Tissue Contact Detection from Stereo Depth in Robot-Assisted Surgery