Aerial Assistive Payload Transportation Using Quadrotor UAVs with Nonsingular Fast Terminal SMC for Human Physical Interaction

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel control approach for quadrotor UAVs to assist human-guided payload transportation, ensuring stability and robustness through nonsingular fast terminal sliding mode control, validated by extensive simulations.

Contribution

It proposes a new control scheme combining admittance and nonsingular fast terminal sliding mode control for cooperative payload transport with UAVs, enhancing stability and human interaction.

Findings

Control system stabilizes payload transport effectively.

Simulation results confirm robustness and feasibility.

Human-UAV collaboration reduces human workload.

Abstract

This paper presents a novel approach to utilizing underactuated quadrotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as assistive devices in cooperative payload transportation task through human guidance and physical interaction. The proposed system consists of two underactuated UAVs rigidly connected to the transported payload. This task involves the collaboration between human and UAVs to transport and manipulate a payload. The goal is to reduce the workload of the human and enable seamless interaction between the human operator and the aerial vehicle. An Admittance-Nonsingular Fast Terminal Sliding Mode Control (NFTSMC) is employed to control and asymptotically stabilize the system while performing the task, where forces are applied to the payload by the human operator dictate the aerial vehicle's motion. The stability of the proposed controller is confirmed using Lyapunov analysis. Extensive simulation studies were conducted using MATLAB, Robot Operating System (ROS), and Gazebo to validate robustness and effectiveness of the proposed controller in assisting with payload transportation tasks. Results demonstrates feasibility and potential benefits utilizing quadrotor UAVs as assistive devices for payload transportation through intuitive human-guided control. Keywords Cooperative payload transportation, Admittance control, Sliding mode control, Quadrotor control