Geometric Control and Experimental Validation for a Quadrotor UAV Transporting a Payload

This paper presents a control system for a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle transporting a payload connected by a link. This system is considered as a multibody system evolving a nonlinear configuration manifold to construct an intrinsic global formulation of the dynamics. Based on this, a geometric control system is proposed such that the payload follows an arbitrary desired trajectory. In particular, the effects of the mass distribution of the link connecting the quadrotor and the payload are explicitly considered in the dynamic model and the stability analysis. Furthermore, the control system is designed to eliminate the adverse effects of disturbances. The efficacy of the proposed geometric tracking control system is illustrated by both a numerical example and an indoor flight experiment.