Load Transportation Using Aerial Robots: Safe and Efficient Load Manipulation (SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology)

Unmanned aerial vehicles are increasingly being used to perform complex functions or to assist humans to carry out dangerous missions within dynamic environments. Other possible applications include search and rescue, disaster relief operations, environmental monitoring, wireless surveillance networks, and cooperative manipulation. Creating these types of autonomous aerial vehicles places severe demands on the design of control schemes that can adapt to different scenarios and possible changes of vehicle dynamics. In this book we address the challenging problem of employing aerial robots to transport and manipulate loads safely and efficiently. Aerial load manipulation and transportation is extremely important in emergency rescue missions as well as for military and industrial purposes. This book gives an insight into problems that can arise in aerial load transportation and suggests control systems techniques to solve them. A key focus is given on modeling of the aerial load transportation system as well as stability and robustness analysis. A detailed design and derivation of control algorithms based on adaptive control, optimal control and reinforcement learning are discussed in detail. Furthermore, an experimental testbed and controller implementation are delineated.