Joint State-Parameter Observer-Based Robust Control of a UAV for Heavy Load Transportation

Taking advantage of their versatility and autonomous operation, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be used for aerial load transportation, with many applications such as vertical replenishment of seaborne vessels [11], deployment of supplies in search-and-rescue missions [1], package delivery, and landmine detection [2]. Aerial load transportation using UA Vs is a challenging task in terms of modeling and control. The load may be connected to the UAV either rigidly or by means of a rope, which changes its dynamics considerably. In addition, the load physical parameters are often unknown in practice, and their knowledge is usually necessary to effectively accomplish the task. A model-free control approach based on trajectory generation by reinforcement learning has been proposed in [7] for path tracking of the load using a quadrotor UAV (QUAV). This work was in part supported by the project INCT (National Institute of Science and Technology) for Cooperative Autonomous Systems Applied to Security and Environment under the grants CNPq 465755/2014-3 and F APESP 2014/50851-0, and by the Brazilian agencies CAPES under the grant numbers 88887.136349/2017-00