Robust Control of an Rotary-wing UAV with Suspended Load

Abstract

There is a growing interest in unmanned aerial vehicles, which can be used to transport loads in emergency situations or to access difficult geography. In certain scenarios, the carried load is connected using nonrigid links attached to the vehicle’s center of gravity, creating a suspended configuration. An unmanned aerial vehicle with a suspended load is a complex system that needs to keep desired levels of performance and stability, despite the disturbances generated by the load oscillations and coupled dynamics. In this work, we design the robust control for an unmanned aerial vehicle with suspended load based in the H∞ norm and the loop shaping approach. The proposed controller is tuned to find the best robustness in terms of performance and stability, even in adverse scenarios with the presence of sensor noise, environmental disturbances and parameter uncertainties. The simulation results show the robust controller keeps good tracking, better disturbance rejections, and it is a straightforward alternative to be considered for complex systems.