Estimation, Control, and Planning for Autonomous Aerial Transportation

This paper presents estimation and control synthesis for an aerial manipulator to carry an unknown payload. Online estimation is based on parametrization of the aerial manipulator, which consists of a multirotor and a robotic arm. With the estimated physical properties, an augmented adaptive controller is proposed so that the end effector of the robotic arm can track the desired trajectory. Relying on this control structure, finally, we propose a flight motion generation method satisfying the joint angle limitation based on the analysis of the allowable flight area with respect to the joint angle variation. To validate our approach, the simulation results with comparison of conventional adaptive controller are shown. We also perform load carrying experiments using a custom-made aerial manipulator.