Force Control in Cooperative Aerial Manipulation

We consider a group of aerial manipulators (AM) collaboratively transporting a flexible payload. Each AM is a quadcopter with a single rigid link attached to it. We develop an adaptive decentralized control law for transporting a payload with an unknown mass without explicit communication between the agents. The algorithm provides desired thrust and attitude angles required for each quadcopter to cooperatively transport a flexible payload. It also guarantees that all the agents converge to a desired velocity and regulates the contact force. The sum of the estimates of the unknown mass from all the agents converge to the true mass. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm in simulations.