Cooperative Aerial Transportation of Nonuniform Load through Quadrotors by Elastic and Flexible Cables

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive dynamic model and control strategy for multiple quadrotors transporting a nonuniform, flexible load, ensuring accurate trajectory following through multi-layered control loops and stability guarantees.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed dynamic model including cable flexibility and load nonuniformity, along with a novel multi-loop control strategy with proven stability for aerial load transportation.

Findings

Control strategy successfully guides nonuniform loads to desired locations.

Simulations confirm system stability and effectiveness for various load distributions.

Model accounts for cable flexibility and load heterogeneity, enhancing realism.

Abstract

In this paper, first the full dynamics of aerial transportation of a rigid body with arbitrary number of quadrotors is derived. Then a control strategy is proposed to convey the nonuniform rigid body appropriately to the desired trajectory. In the dynamical model of this transportation system, not only the load is considered as a nonuniform and non-homogeneous rigid body but also mass, flexibility, and tension of the cables are considered. Each cable is modeled as successive masses, springs, and dampers where each mass, spring, and damper has 4 degrees of freedom (DOF). The Euler-Lagrange equations are used to derive the motion equation. The control strategy includes three loops of attitude control, formation control, and navigation control. The sliding mode control is designed based on multi-agent systems for the formation control where the controller is proven to be asymptotically stable. The navigation control loop, based on the load states, guarantees that the load reaches the desired location. Finally, numerical examples and simulations are presented to verify the appropriate operation of the proposed system for transporting both homogeneous and non-homogeneous bodies by spreading quadrotors according to mass distribution of the body.