Modeling and control of a new quadrotor manipulation system

This paper introduces a new quadrotor manipulation system that consists of a 2-link manipulator attached to the bottom of a quadrotor. This new system presents a solution for the drawbacks found in the current quadrotor manipulation system which uses a gripper fixed to a quadrotor. Unlike the current system, the proposed system enables the end-effector to achieve any arbitrary orientation and thus increases its degrees of freedom from 4 to 6. Also, it provides enough distance between the quadrotor and the object to be manipulated. This is useful in some applications such as demining applications. System kinematics and dynamics are derived which are highly nonlinear. Controller is designed based on feedback linearization to track desired trajectories. Controlling the movements in the horizontal directions is simplified by utilizing the derived nonholonmic constraints. Finally, the proposed system is simulated using MATLAB/SIMULINK program. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed controller.