Geometric Control of Quadrotor UAVs Transporting a Cable-Suspended Rigid Body

Abstract

This paper is focused on tracking control for a rigid body payload that is connected to an arbitrary number of quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles via rigid links. An intrinsic form of the equations of motion is derived on the nonlinear configuration manifold, and a geometric controller is constructed such that the payload asymptotically follows a given desired trajectory for its position and attitude in the presence of uncertainties. The unique feature is that the coupled dynamics between the rigid body payload, links, and quadrotors are explicitly incorporated into control system design and stability analysis. These are developed in a coordinate-free fashion to avoid singularities and complexities that are associated with local parameterizations. The desirable features of the proposed control system are illustrated by a numerical example.