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Tethered UAV Autonomous Knotting on Environmental Structures for Transport
Rui Jin1, Xinhang Xu1, Yizhuo Yang1
1School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang 639798, Singapore.
Cyborg and Bionic Systems (Washington, D.C.)
|December 29, 2025
Summary
This study presents a novel cable-driven transport system using a tethered unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for autonomous cable anchoring. The system enables heavy-load transport in unprepared environments, enhancing robotic logistics capabilities.
Area of Science:
- Robotics
- Autonomous Systems
- Mechanical Engineering
Background:
- Cable-driven robotic systems offer high load-bearing efficiency for transport.
- Autonomous anchoring of cable endpoints in unknown environments remains a significant challenge.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop a deployable cable-driven transport system with autonomous anchoring capabilities.
- To enable heavy-load transport in unstructured and unprepared environments.
Main Methods:
- Integration of a tethered unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a winch mechanism.
- A modular knot planner featuring human-in-the-loop enclosing plane extraction and path search.
- Utilizing metrics for planarity, tether visibility, and clearance in knotting trajectory generation.
Main Results:
- Successful autonomous knotting operation around a target structure in an urbanized outdoor environment.
- Demonstrated lifting of a 15.3-kg payload to a height of 3.5 meters.
- Simulation studies confirmed shape-agnostic knotting and ablation experiments validated optimization metrics.
Conclusions:
- The proposed system is practical and robust for autonomous heavy-load transport in complex, unprepared environments.
- Offers new capabilities for rapidly deployable robotic logistics.
- Highlights the effectiveness of joint optimization metrics for autonomous anchoring.
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