Cooperative Load Transportation Using Three Quadrotors

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) provide a wide range of applications, amongst which is load transportation. However, they have low payload capabilities, in general. Then, whenever a heavier load should be transported it is necessary to use a team of UAVs to accomplish the task. In this work, a team of three UAVs in a formation are used to carry a cargo heavier than the capacity of a single vehicle. A nonlinear control strategy based on feedback linearization is used to guide each aircraft in positioning and trajectory tracking tasks while keeping the formation stable, compensating the disturbances caused by the load and the cross effect of cable tensions.