Modeling and control for aerial manipulation based on center of inertia on SE(3)

The multipropeller aerial manipulation robot (MAMR) is composed of a multirotor aircraft and a manipulator. It has strong nonlinear coupling and underactuated characteristics, and its dynamics and control problems pose great challenges for researchers. In this paper, the dynamic model of MAMR based on the center of inertia (COI) is established, and the COI is expressed by exponential coordinates on the special Euclidean group SE(3). This kind of model based on COI considers the rotorcraft and the manipulator as a single system. The model can describe the motion of the MAMR by considering the change in the MAMR’s COI. The multi-rigid body system of a separated rotorcraft and manipulator is regarded as a single rigid system, which solves the strong coupling problem and realizes the pose integrated motion description. Then, based on the COI dynamics, a cascade trajectory linearization controller is designed to stabilize the MAMR. The cascade control architecture is very suitable for real-world experiments because of its convenience of parameter adjustment. The stability of the controller is proved by the Lyapunov method. Furthermore, the stability of the system is verified by simulation. Finally, a prototype is built, and outdoor experiments are carried out to prove the feasibility and effectiveness of our proposed method.