Modeling and Controlling the Dynamic Behavior of an Aerial Manipulator

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) installed with a gripper is an effective and robust way to grab the wanted object from inaccessible locations. In this study, we develop a novel control mechanism to regulate the nonlinear dynamics of the aerial manipulator. In this research, hex-rotor UAV is chosen in order to fulfill the mission requirement in terms of size and weight of the object. It is equipped with a manipulator and the gimbal-based camera that will help to see the desired object and then transport it. The aerial vehicle has six-degrees-of-freedom (6-DOF) and the installed manipulator has 4-DOF which in total makes the 10-DOF aerial manipulator vehicle. At the time of clutching the desired object to eliminate or reduce the external noise, and stabilize the dynamic behavior of the aerial manipulator, we need a robust and efficient controller. To solve the aforementioned problems, this study develops a hybrid control mechanism that tracks and controls the altitude and attitude of UAV after clutching the desired object. The main contribution of this study is to design a control mechanism that includes Model Reference Adaptive Control with an Integrator (MRACI) in conjunction with regulation, pole-placement and tracking (RST) control algorithm. On one hand, the simulation results using MATLAB demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed control mechanism. On the other hand, to cross verify the validity of the proposed control algorithm, we perform the experiment by clutching the desired object at hovering and normal flight operation.