  This work presents the mechanical design and control of a novel small-size
and lightweight Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) for aerial manipulation. To our
knowledge, with a total take-off mass of only 2.0 kg, the proposed system is
the most lightweight Aerial Manipulator (AM) that has 8-DOF independently
controllable: 5 for the aerial platform and 3 for the articulated arm. We
designed the robot to be fully-actuated in the body forward direction. This
allows independent pitching and instantaneous force generation, improving the
platform's performance during physical interaction. The robotic arm is an
origami delta manipulator driven by three servomotors, enabling active motion
compensation at the end-effector. Its composite multimaterial links help reduce
the weight, while their flexibility allow for compliant aerial interaction with
the environment. In particular, the arm's stiffness can be changed according to
its configuration. We provide an in depth discussion of the system design and
characterize the stiffness of the delta arm. A control architecture to deal
with the platform's overactuation while exploiting the delta arm is presented.
Its capabilities are experimentally illustrated both in free flight and
physical interaction, highlighting advantages and disadvantages of the
origami's folding mechanism.
