Trajectory Generation for Quadrotor Based Systems using Numerical Optimal Control

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that numerical optimal control via direct multiple shooting can efficiently generate trajectories for complex quadrotor systems and tasks without requiring analytic solutions, enabling versatile applications.

Contribution

The paper introduces the use of direct multiple shooting for flexible, on-the-fly trajectory generation in complex quadrotor systems, bypassing the need for analytic solutions.

Findings

Successfully generated trajectories for quadrotors with complex tasks

Applied the method to systems with slung loads and pendulums

Enabled real-time trajectory planning for diverse scenarios

Abstract

The recent works on quadrotor have focused on more and more challenging tasks on increasingly complex systems. Systems are often augmented with slung loads, inverted pendulums or arms, and accomplish complex tasks such as going through a window, grasping, throwing or catching. Usually, controllers are designed to accomplish a specific task on a specific system using analytic solutions, so each application needs long preparations. On the other hand, the direct multiple shooting approach is able to solve complex problems without any analytic development, by using on-the-shelf optimization solver. In this paper, we show that this approach is able to solve a wide range of problems relevant to quadrotor systems, from on-line trajectory generation for quadrotors, to going through a window for a quadrotor-and-pendulum system, through manipulation tasks for a aerial manipulator.