Path Following Control of Multiple Quadrotors Carrying A Rigid-body Slung Payload
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Novel robust path-following flight controllers for quadrotors carrying a tethered payload are extensively studied from the perspective of dynamic modelling, control design, and experimental verification. By using multiple quadrotors to cooperatively carry a payload, their payload capacities can be significantly boosted. The number of vehicles can be adjusted according to the weight of the payload, resulting in a flexible and efficient use of drone resources. The presented model development starts from a single quadrotor with a point-mass payload to multiple quadrotors with a rigid-body payload. The payload is towed by quadrotors with cables. The systems are decomposed into the payload subsystem and the quadrotor attitude subsystem by assuming the cable is tethered at the center of mass of each quadrotor. The controller designs are then developed for a single quadrotor with a point-mass payload, followed by controller of multiple quadrotors with a rigid-body payload. Both controllers resemble a cascade form in structure. The outer loop offers a robust path-following controller that stabilizes the payload subsystem by assuming the lift vector of each quadrotor can point instantaneously to a given direction. An uncertainty and disturbance estimator is designed to estimate and eliminate the lumped disturbances caused by exogenous wind and parameter imperfection. The inner loop, on the other hand, is an attitude tracker implemented on each quadrotor to follow a reference attitude generated by the outer-loop controller. The overall stability of the complete system is proven using the Lyapunov method and the Reduction Theorem. Aside from the analytical control law, a model predictive controller (MPC) method is also studied and implemented on quadrotor for cooperative slung payload delivery. The MPC method utilizes the equivalent damping force from the previous controller as the baseline stabilizing inner loop. The linearized closed-loop model is then calculated. Finally, the optimum controller is calculated after a prediction horizon and a cost function are defined. The MPC scheme achieves better performance and requires less parameter tuning. Extensive simulations and experiments show that the controller designs are capable of stabilizing the payload under model imperfection and exogenous disturbances simultaneously.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".