Uploaded March 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
Video for the T-RO accepted paper.
The video presents the paper "Impact-Aware Planning and Control for Aerial Robots with Suspended Payload".
Preprint: to be released.
Project Website: sites.google.com/view/suspended-payload
Source code: github.com/HKUST-Aerial-Robotics/IMPACTOR
A quadrotor with a cable-suspended payload imposes great challenges in impact-aware planning and control. This joint system has dual motion modes, depending on whether
the cable is slack or not, and presents complicated dynamics.Therefore, generating feasible agile flight while preserving the retractable nature of the cable is still a challenging task. In this paper, we propose a novel impact-aware planning and control framework that resolves potential impacts caused by motion mode switching. Our method leverages the augmented Lagrangian method (ALM) to solve an optimization problem with nonlinear complementarity constraints (ONCC), which ensures trajectory feasibility with high accuracy while maintaining efficiency. We further propose a hybrid nonlinear model predictive control method to address the model mismatch issue in agile flight. Our methods have been comprehensively validated in both simulation and experiments, demonstrating superior performance compared to existing approaches. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to successfully perform automatic multiple motion mode switching for aerial payload systems in real-world experiments.
Video for the T-RO accepted paper.
The video presents the paper "Impact-Aware Planning and Control for Aerial Robots with Suspended Payload".
Preprint: to be released.
Project Website: sites.google.com/view/suspended-payload
Source code: github.com/HKUST-Aerial-Robotics/IMPACTOR
A quadrotor with a cable-suspended payload imposes great challenges in impact-aware planning and control. This joint system has dual motion modes, depending on whether
the cable is slack or not, and presents complicated dynamics.Therefore, generating feasible agile flight while preserving the retractable nature of the cable is still a challenging task. In this paper, we propose a novel impact-aware planning and control framework that resolves potential impacts caused by motion mode switching. Our method leverages the augmented Lagrangian method (ALM) to solve an optimization problem with nonlinear complementarity constraints (ONCC), which ensures trajectory feasibility with high accuracy while maintaining efficiency. We further propose a hybrid nonlinear model predictive control method to address the model mismatch issue in agile flight. Our methods have been comprehensively validated in both simulation and experiments, demonstrating superior performance compared to existing approaches. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to successfully perform automatic multiple motion mode switching for aerial payload systems in real-world experiments.
![[Revised] Alternating Minimization Based Trajectory Generation for Quadrotor Aggressive Flight](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/H89ALyWA2NI/mqdefault.jpg "[Revised] Alternating Minimization Based Trajectory Generation for Quadrotor Aggressive Flight
Video for the RA-L/IROS 2020 submission.
(The revised video contains additional quantitative results)
Preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.10629
Code: https://github.com/ZJU-FAST-Lab/am_traj
Supplementary Material: https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.09254
In this paper, we propose a framework for generating large-scale piecewise polynomial trajectories for aggressive autonomous flight, with highlights on its superior computational efficiency and simultaneous spatial-temporal optimality. Exploiting the implicitly decoupled structure of the planning problem, we conduct alternating minimization between boundary condition and time duration of each piece of the trajectory. In each phase of minimization, we leverage the algebraic convenience of the sub-problem to escape poor local minima and achieve the lowest time consumption. Theoretical analysis for the global/local convergence rate of our proposed method is also provided. Moreover, based on polynomial theory, an extremely fast feasibility check method is designed for various kinds of constraints. By incorporating the method into our alternating structure, a recursive constrained optimization algorithm is constructed for generating optimal feasible trajectory in terms of all representable constraints. Benchmark evaluation shows that our algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art methods regarding efficiency, optimality, and scalability. Aggressive flight experiments in limited space with dense obstacles are presented to demonstrate the performance of our algorithm.")
![Swarm of Micro Flying Robots in the Wild [All]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/L0fJ0EHHfOA/mqdefault.jpg "Swarm of Micro Flying Robots in the Wild [All]
Video for the paper published by Science Robotics.")
