Centroid vectoring control using aerial manipulator: Experimental results

Abstract

This paper addresses the issues of aerial manipulation and its dynamic center of mass variations by deriving a control principle capable of exploiting this disturbance as a means to stabilize the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). A complete mathematical model of an aerial robot consisting of rotorcraft UAV body and a generic multiple degree of freedom manipulator is derived and presented. Previously developed control scheme utilizing both the rotor speed control and centroid vectoring through the mid-ranging approach is augmented with a standard position control loop. The proposed control approach is tested and verified in manual and autonomous flight experiments. We present the results of centroid vectoring control on a trajectory tracking example alongside which we provide comparison with state-of the-art approaches.