A Novel Design of a Lightweight Magnetic Plate for a Delivery Drone

This work describes a lightweight magnetic plate for the pick and place task of objects with a ferromagnetic surface. The plate can be installed on any type of platform, namely both on ground and aerial vehicles. Its structure makes it fully customizable in size or attraction power. The main contributions of the proposed solution are a) the lightness of the device and b) the reduced power consumption required, compared to other typical solutions used in pick and place operations. This is even more relevant in long time operations where suction grippers or electromagnets would require an intensive power consumption. In this paper the design and implementation of the system along with the experimental results are presented.