  Drone application for aerial manipulation is tested in such areas as
industrial maintenance, supporting the rescuers in emergencies, and e-commerce.
Most of such applications require teleoperation. The operator receives visual
feedback from the camera installed on a robot arm or drone. As aerial
manipulation requires delicate and precise motion of robot arm, the camera data
delay, narrow field of view, and blurred images caused by drone dynamics can
lead the UAV to crash. The paper focuses on the development of a novel
teleoperation system for aerial manipulation using Virtual Reality (VR). The
controlled system consists of UAV with a 4-DoF robotic arm and embedded
sensors. VR application presents the digital twin of drone and remote
environment to the user through a head-mounted display (HMD). The operator
controls the position of the robotic arm and gripper with VR trackers worn on
the arm and tracking glove with vibrotactile feedback. Control data is
translated directly from VR to the real robot in real-time. The experimental
results showed a stable and robust teleoperation mediated by the VR scene. The
proposed system can considerably improve the quality of aerial manipulations.
