Adaptive Trajectory Tracking Control for the Quadrotor Aerial Transportation System Landing a Payload Onto the Mobile Platform

Recently, it is becoming increasingly possible to apply aerial transportation systems to real-world applications. However, current research works on cable-suspended transportation systems present practical limitations due to the fixed-length cable. With the introduction of the cable adjustment mechanism, various complicated tasks, such as limited space crossing, offshore sample collection, and even landing the payload on a mobile platform, can be accomplished by actively changing the distance between the quadrotor and the payload. In order to complete the aforementioned tasks, a trajectory tracking control method is in urgent need for the variable-length-cable-suspended aerial transportation systems. To this end, an adaptive tracking control approach with the consideration of unknown resistance coefficients is designed in this article. Subsequently, Lyapunov techniques and Barbalat's Lemma are utilized to prove the convergence for the equilibrium point of the closed-loop system. Finally, hardware experiments are meticulously conducted based on a self-built experimental platform, which verify the satisfactory performance of the proposed method in antiswing aerial transportation and payload landing onto the mobile platform.