A Practical Perspective on the Drone-With-a-Slung-Load Problem

Controlling a system consisting of a drone carrying a payload with a cable is a problem of practical importance within UAV control. Contrarily to previous work, this paper investigates a control scheme for this problem where neither the deviation angles of the cable nor the mass of the load are known or measured, with an emphasis on simplicity and applicability on a wide array of available flight controllers. Our approach combines differential-algebraic considerations for motion planning and trajectory generation, together with simple controllers used for feedback. Simulation results are proposed to illustrate the potential of the approach.