  This paper presents the design, development, and testing of hardware-software
systems by the IISc-TCS team for Challenge 1 of the Mohammed Bin Zayed
International Robotics Challenge 2020. The goal of Challenge 1 was to grab a
ball suspended from a moving and maneuvering UAV and pop balloons anchored to
the ground, using suitable manipulators. The important tasks carried out to
address this challenge include the design and development of a hardware system
with efficient grabbing and popping mechanisms, considering the restrictions in
volume and payload, design of accurate target interception algorithms using
visual information suitable for outdoor environments, and development of a
software architecture for dynamic multi-agent aerial systems performing complex
dynamic missions. In this paper, a single degree of freedom manipulator
attached with an end-effector is designed for grabbing and popping, and robust
algorithms are developed for the interception of targets in an uncertain
environment. Vision-based guidance and tracking laws are proposed based on the
concept of pursuit engagement and artificial potential function. The software
architecture presented in this work proposes an Operation Management System
(OMS) architecture that allocates static and dynamic tasks collaboratively
among multiple UAVs to perform any given mission. An important aspect of this
work is that all the systems developed were designed to operate in completely
autonomous mode. A detailed description of the architecture along with
simulations of complete challenge in the Gazebo environment and field
experiment results are also included in this work. The proposed
hardware-software system is particularly useful for counter-UAV systems and can
also be modified in order to cater to several other applications.
