Harmonic extended state observer based anti-swing attitude control for quadrotor with slung load

During the flight of the quadrotor, the existence of a slung load will exert a swing effect on the system and the motion of which will significantly change the dynamics of the quadrotor. The external torque caused by the slung load can be considered as a kind of disturbance and it is a threat to the attitude control stability of the system. In order to solve this problem, a high precision disturbance compensation method is presented in this paper, based on the harmonic extended state observer (HESO). Firstly, a generic mathematical model for the quadrotor-slung load system is obtained via the Lagrangian mechanics, and according to the analysis of the slung load motion, we obtain the disturbance as a form of periodic equation. Secondly, based on the dynamic model of the disturbance, we propose a HESO to achieve high precision disturbance estimation and its stability is proved by Lyapunov theory. Thirdly, we designed an attitude tracking controller based on backstepping method, and discussed the stability of the entire system. Finally, numerical simulations and real time experiments are carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. Our results show that the robustness of the quadrotor subject to slung load has been improved.