Abstract
An aerial manipulator is a new kind of flying robot system composed of a rotorcraft unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and a multi-link robotic arm. It gives the flying robot the capacity to complete manipulation tasks. Steady flight is essential for an aerial manipulator to complete manipulation tasks. This paper focuses on the steady flight control performance of the aerial manipulator. A separate control strategy is used in the aerial manipulator system, in which the UAV and the manipulator are controlled separately. In order to complete tasks in environments with strong wind disturbance, an acceleration feedback enhanced robust H∞ controller was designed for the UAV in the aerial manipulator. The controller is based on the hierarchical inner-outer loop control structure of the UAV and composed of a robust H∞ controller and acceleration feedback enhanced term, which is used to compensate for the wind disturbance. Experimental results of aerial grasping of a target object show that the controller can suppress the wind disturbance effectively, and make the aerial manipulator hover steadily with sufficient accuracy to complete aerial manipulation tasks in strong wind.
Highlights
In recent years, aerial manipulation has become a hot research topic in the field of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) [1,2].To complete aerial manipulation tasks, researchers have integrated tools with UAVs
In order to achieve optimal performance in the pick-and-place task, the nonlinear model predictive control (MPC) method was used in an aerial manipulator composed of a quadrotor and a 2-degree of freedom (DoF) of robotic arm in [17]
In order to validate the wind disturbance rejection performance of the acceleration feedback enhanced H∞ controller presented in Section 3, the experiments of aerial grasping of a target object in the wind are conducted
Summary
Aerial manipulation has become a hot research topic in the field of UAVs [1,2]. In order to achieve optimal performance in the pick-and-place task, the nonlinear MPC method was used in an aerial manipulator composed of a quadrotor and a 2-DoF of robotic arm in [17]. The above works on aerial manipulator system control have provided various methods to complete different manipulation tasks These methods have been applied in experiments in structured environments, in which nothing can affect UAV control performance. This paper pays more attention to the steady flight of the aerial manipulator in strong wind, and the acceleration feedback control method was applied into aerial manipulator control. An acceleration feedback enhanced robust H∞ controller of UAV was designed, which can give the aerial manipulator the ability to reject the wind disturbance.
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