Control Architecture for a Quadrotor Transporting a Cable-Suspended Load of Uncertain Mass

Abstract

This paper presents an architecture for controlling a quadrotor transporting a cable-suspended load of uncertain mass. A family of trajectories is proposed that is composed by three phases—lift-off, transit, and landing—and implemented as a hybrid system. The proposed control system uses an adaptive geometric controller with asymptotic tracking stability. The mass of the transported load was estimated using an adaptive mechanism, which adjusts the action resorting to a geometric control method. The resulting system was validated in simulation with a mid-flight mass reduction of the transported load, and tests were performed using a range of values of load mass and maximum forward velocity. There is work in the literature that approaches the cable-suspended component of the problem, and there are also papers focused on uncertainty in the model, mass included. This work aimed to solve these two problems simultaneously, having the uncertain component being the mass of the suspended load.