On the human control of a multiple quadcopters with a cable-suspended payload system

Abstract

A quadcopter is an under-actuated system with only four control inputs for six degrees of freedom, and yet the human control of a quadcopter is simple enough to be learned with some practice. In this work, we consider the problem of human control of a multiple quadcopters system to transport a cable-suspended payload. The coupled dynamics of the system, due to the inherent physical constraints, is used to develop a leader-follower architecture where the leader quadcopter is controlled directly by a human operator and the followers are controlled with the proposed Payload Attitude Controller and Cable Attitude Controller. Experiments, where a human operator flew a two quadcopters system to transport a cable-suspended payload, were conducted to study the performance of proposed controller. The results demonstrated successful implementation of human control in these systems. This work presents the possibility of enabling manual control for on-the-go maneuvering of the quadcopter-payload system which motivates aerial transportation in the unknown environments.