Cooperative Transportation of a Point Mass with Unknown Weight by Multiple Quadrotors

This paper is concerned with the problem of carrying a load by multiple quadrotor agents. The load is modeled by a point mass with an unknown weight for agents. The load and agents are connected to each other by ropes. The Udwadia-Kalaba equation is used to calculate the constraint forces on the ropes acting on each quadrotor. An adaptive controller is proposed to estimate force of the rope connected to each quadrotor. By estimation of the tensions in the ropes, the weight and position of the load can be estimated and agents can carry the load to track a desired trajectory. Simulation results show the acceptable performance of the proposed algorithm.