Patent 11091256 was granted and assigned to Purdue Research Foundation on August, 2021 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system is disclosed. The UAV system includes a chassis, a plurality of propeller assemblies configured to provide vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) for the chassis with propulsion in 6 degrees of freedom including along a cartesian coordinate system (X, Y, Z) and provide yaw, pitch, and roll, the plurality of propeller assemblies are selected from the group consisting of (i) two fixed propeller assemblies and a tiltable propeller assembly, and (ii) four fixed propeller assemblies, a boom having a boom propeller assembly, configured to selectively provide positive and negative rectilinear thrust vectors, and an end-effector coupled to a distal end of the boom, the end-effector having a force sensor configured to provide contact force between the end-effector and an object.