Rod-shaped payload transportation using multiple quadrotors

Abstract

Aiming to address and contribute to the topic of load transportation using aerial vehicles, this work presents a cooperative system using two quadrotors to carry a rod-shaped load. The problem is dealt with as a virtual-structure formation, considering the load and quadrotor as a line formation that needs to be accomplished. The load is carried as a cable-suspended one, and a nonlinear controller based on feedback linearization is employed to fulfill the mission requests while minimizing the load oscillations. Experiments were conducted using two AR.Drone 2.0 quadrotors, carrying an aluminum rod. The paper presents the results of such experiments in illustrations and videos, showing the good performance of the proposed algorithms, thus validating them.