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Controlling a Quadrotor Carrying a Cable-Suspended Load to Pass Through a Window

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Abstract

In this paper, we design an optimal control system for a quadrotor to carry a cable-suspended load flying through a window. As the window is narrower than the length of the cable, it is very challenging to design a practical control system to pass through it. Our solution includes a system identification component, a trajectory generation component, and a trajectory tracking control component. The exact dynamic model that usually derived from the first principles is assumed to be unavailable. Instead, a model identification approach is adopted, which relies on a simple but effective low order equivalent system (LOES) to describe the core dynamical characteristics of the system. After being excited by some specifically designed manoeuvres, the unknown parameters in the LOES are obtained by using a frequency based least square estimation algorithm. Based on the estimated LOES, a numerical optimization algorithm is then utilized for aggressive trajectory generation when relevant constraints are given. The generated trajectory can lead to the quadrotor and load system passing through a narrow window with a cascade PD trajectory tracking controller. Finally, a practical flight test based on an Astec Hummingbird quadrotor is demonstrated and the result validates the proposed approach.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Yaser Alothman, Robin Dowling and Ian Dukes at the University of Essex for their technical support and M. P. Kelly from Cornell University for sharing his Matlab library of OptimTraj.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electronics Information Engineering, Suzhou Vocational University, Suzhou, 215104, China

    Minhuan Guo

  2. School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK

    Dongbing Gu

  3. Information Science Academy of China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, Chaoyang, China

    Wenzhong Zha

  4. School of Mechanical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210094, China

    Xinhua Zhu & Yan Su

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  1. Minhuan Guo
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  2. Dongbing Gu
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  3. Wenzhong Zha
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  4. Xinhua Zhu
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  5. Yan Su
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Correspondence to Minhuan Guo.

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Guo, M., Gu, D., Zha, W. et al. Controlling a Quadrotor Carrying a Cable-Suspended Load to Pass Through a Window. J Intell Robot Syst 98, 387–401 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-019-01038-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-019-01038-6

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