Adaptive Nonlinear Hierarchical Control for a Rotorcraft Transporting a Cable-Suspended Payload

Rotorcrafts, with satisfactory maneuver performance and ability under complex terrains unreach able for ground robots, are playing important roles for goods transportation. In this article, we focus on the control of the cable-suspended transportation way due to its lower costs and more agility of the rotorcraft’s rotational motion. Compared with traditional crane systems and single rotorcrafts without loads, the aerial transportation system presents “double” underactuated property, stronger system nonlinearity, and more complex dynamic coupling, which are huge challenges for control schemes design. Meanwhile, aerial transportation usually suffers from external disturbances and uncertainties presented with aerodynamic damping coefficients and rope length. Additionally, overshoots of the rotorcraft’s position are potential threats for flight safety, especially in confined and complex environments. To address these problems, a novel adaptive control scheme is designed, which ensures effective rotorcraft positioning and payload swing suppression with restricted overshoot amplitudes. Asymptotic results are obtained with rigorous theoretical derivations provided by the Lyapunov-based stability analysis and LaSalle’s invariance theorem. Real-time experiments are performed to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme even in the presence of external disturbances. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first method designed for aerial transportation systems which achieves simultaneous rotorcraft positioning and swing suppression, together with insurance for overshoot restriction even in the presence of parametric uncertainties.