Adaptive Load-Carrying Control using Quadrotors in a Tandem Configuration

This paper presents an adaptive control strategy for cooperative cargo transportation using quadcopters in a tan-dem configuration. By modeling the payload and the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as a unified rigid-body system, the proposed framework addresses the dynamic interactions among them, ensuring robust performance in tasks such as cargo transportation. The system uses an underactuated adaptive control approach, capable of dealing with variations in payload weight while maintaining stability and agility during flight. The proposed strategy is validated through numerical experiments, demonstrating its effectiveness in trajectory tracking tasks. The results show the system's ability to adapt the parameters of the system modeling to the observed and measured values, guaranteeing the tracking of the proposed trajectory and the robust payload handling. This work contributes to the development of cooperative aerial cargo transportation systems, with applications in transportation missions that exceed the individual capacity of each UAV.