Task-space Tracking Control for Underactuated Aerial Manipulators

A flying vehicle equipped with a robotic manipulator poses a challenging control problem because of the dynamical coupling between both subsystems. In order to achieve highly dynamic behaviors while enabling precise end-effector tracking of the manipulator, this coupling has to be taken into account in the control design. In this paper, an inertial decomposition of the full rigid body dynamics is utilized to design a control law, which guarantees end-effector reference tracking and position trajectory control of the overall system. The stability analysis of the closed loop system is accompanied with a validation in simulation of the proposed controller.