Journal Papers

Multi-vehicle Cooperative Control for Load Transportation

Abstract:
This work proposes a cooperative control solution to the problem of transporting a suspended load using multiple quadrotor vehicles. The problem is addressed for two quadrotors, with a methodology that can be generalized for any number of quadrotors. A dynamic model of the system is developed considering a point-mass load, rigid massless cables, and neglecting aerodynamic effects of the cables. The concept of differential flatness is explored and a new set of flat outputs, which can be used to fully characterize the state of the system, is proposed. A nonlinear Lyapunov-based controller in cascaded form is derived, by defining adequate mappings between the cable tension vectors and the quadrotor thrust vectors and exploring the analogy with the problem of controlling a single quadrotor. Simulation results are presented for tracking of load trajectories. Comparisons are made with a free-flying quadrotor control scheme to highlight the enhanced performance of the proposed scheme.
Impact factor:
URL:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405896319312212

21st IFAC Symposium on Automatic Control in Aerospace ACA 2019, vol. 52, 2019, pp. 358–363