Stable Near-Ground Hovering and Grasping with Rotary-Wing UAVs Equipped with Flexible Manipulators: A Review

Abstract

As unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) missions expand from aerial inspection and environmental sensing to physical interaction and autonomous manipulation, rotary-wing UAVs equipped with flexible manipulators offer a promising platform for contact-rich operations in complex environments. Among these tasks, stable near-ground hovering and the grasping of ground targets are particularly challenging because they involve ground-effect aerodynamics, rigid–flexible coupling, and mode transitions caused by contact and load transfer. This review provides a structured, task-oriented critical synthesis of advances in this interdisciplinary field. First, system configurations are classified by aerial-platform architecture, manipulator type, mounting arrangement, and end-effector design, and the suitability of rigid-link, compliant, continuum, and soft manipulation mechanisms for near-ground grasping is assessed. Next, modeling approaches for rotor ground effect, coupled rigid–flexible dynamics, hybrid contact and load-transfer dynamics, model identification, and model reduction are reviewed. Trajectory planning, coordinated stabilization, impedance control, hybrid force/position control, and switching control are then compared across free flight, contact establishment, and payload-carrying hover. Although the reviewed literature provides a substantial theoretical foundation for aerial manipulation, continuum robotics, and multirotor ground effect, direct evidence remains limited for methods that jointly address near-ground aerodynamics, large flexible deformation, and contact-induced load transfer across the complete near-ground grasping sequence with integrated experimental validation. Based on these evidence gaps, this review identifies multiphysics reduced-order modeling and event-driven hybrid control as author-synthesized directions for future investigation.