Cooperative Transportation using Multiple Single-Rotor Robots and Decentralized Control for Unknown Payloads

Abstract: Cooperative transportation via multiple aerial robots has the potential to support various payloads and reduce the chances of them being dropped. Furthermore, autonomously controlled robots render the system scalable with respect to the payload. In this study, a cooperative transportation system was developed using rigidly attached single-rotor robots, and a decentralized controller was proposed to guarantee asymptotic stability of the error dynamics for unknown strictly positive real systems. A feedback controller was used to transform unstable systems into strictly positive real ones considering the shared attachment positions. First, the cooperative transportation of unknown payloads with different shapes larger than the carrier robots was investigated via numerical simulations. Second, cooperative transportation of an unknown payload (with a weight of approximately 2.7 kg and maximum length of 1.6 m) was demonstrated using eight robots, even under robot failure. Finally, the proposed system was shown to be capable of carrying an unknown payload, even if the attachment positions were not shared, that is, even if asymptotic stability was not strictly guaranteed.