Geometric Control for Load Transportation with Quadrotor UAVs by Elastic Cables

Abstract: Groups of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly utilized in transportation task as the combined strength allows to increase the maximum payload. However, the resulting mechanical coupling of the UAVs impose new challenges in terms of the tracking control. Thus, we design a geometric trajectory tracking controller for the cooperative task of four quadrotor UAVs carrying and transporting a rigid body, which is attached to the quadrotors via inflexible elastic cables. The elasticity of the cables together with techniques of singular perturbation allows a reduction in the model to that of a similar model with inelastic cables. In this reduced model, we design a controller such that the position and attitude of the load exponentially converges to a given desired trajectory. We then show that this result leads to an uniformly converging tracking error for the original elastic model under some assumptions. Furthermore, under the presence of unstructured disturbances on the system, we show that the error is ultimately bounded with an arbitrarily small bound. Finally, a simulation illustrates the theoretical results.