Geometric Adaptive Control for Aerial Transportation of a 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. A geometric adaptive controller is constructed such that the payload asymptotically follows a given desired trajectory for its position and attitude in the presence of uncertainties. The coupled dynamics between the rigid body payload, links, and quadrotors are explicitly incorporated into control system design and stability analysis. These are developed directly on the nonlinear configuration manifold 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.