Cooperative Heavy Lifting Using Unmanned Multi-Agent Systems
Yu Herng Tan, Shupeng Lai, Kangli Wang, Ben M. Chen · 2018
Cooperative load carrying is an area of multi-agent systems that has extensive potential applications. Though most of the complexities involved with multi-agent operations have been investigated in general swarm operations, the greatest challenge of heavy duty aerial transportation that has yet to be addressed is the limited control authority of the system as a whole as each individual agent, and hence effector, is typically significantly smaller than the payload. Based on the configuration whereby the vehicles are connected rigidly to the load, we present a general optimisation method to find the most effective team arrangement that will maximise the control authority within the physical constraints of the system. Additionally, each UAV is allowed to tilt laterally at a fixed angle relative to the payload, which provides a larger maximum rotational acceleration achievable about the yaw axis. The optimised solution, implementation and results based on the cooperative carrying task in the 2017 International Micro Air Vehicles Competition is presented in this paper. Testing results show that the system designed is effective in transporting the payload autonomously according to generated trajectories.