CAPTURER: A Dexterous Aerial Manipulator for Dynamic and Precise Grasping across Diverse Environments

As a representative form of embodied robotic interaction, aerial grasping requires close coordination between the aerial platform and manipulator. Most existing systems perform aerial grasping with static or slowly moving targets under fixed scenarios. Dynamic and precise grasping across different conditions introduces additional challenges, including target motion, localization drift, dynamic coupling, and external disturbances. In this work, we present CAPTURER, a dexterous aerial manipulator for centimeter-level grasping across diverse environments. To achieve the challenging goal, we first develop an onboard perception system for state estimation and target detection. Drift correction and global pose transformation are introduced to improve target localization during flight. A cooperative motion planner is proposed to coordinate the mobility of the aerial platform with the dexterity of the manipulator according to the relative target state. To maintain grasping accuracy under disturbances, we design a disturbance-rejection controller to compensate for dynamic coupling, model uncertainty, and external disturbances. The capability of CAPTURER is validated through indoor and outdoor experiments with both static and moving targets. The results demonstrate that CAPTURER achieves centimeter-level grasping accuracy for a marker pen measuring only 1.5 cm in diameter at flight speeds exceeding 1.5 m/s.