Adaptive Multi-Quadrotor Control for Cooperative Transportation of a Cable-Suspended Load

This paper presents the problem of cooperative transportation of cable-suspended load by four quadrotors. Quadrotors and the load in the system are modeled using the Newton-Euler approach. A Distributed Model Reference Adaptive Control with σ-modification is applied to synchronize the states of the heterogeneous and unknown quadrotors model. Quadrotors are subject to disturbances as input uncertainties and unstructured dynamic uncertainties that are overcome thanks to the σ-modification. An additional term is added to the control signal to minimize the efforts generated by the suspended load through the maintenance of the desired formation. Finally, quadrotors make use of geometric control to reach the attitude need it. The stability is demonstrated by the Lyapunov method, and the functioning of the algorithm is shown through simulation.