Nonlinear Trajectory Control of Multi-body Aerial Manipulators

This paper studies trajectory control of aerial vehicles equipped with robotic manipulators. The proposed approach employs free-flying multi-body dynamics modeling and backstepping control to develop stabilizing control laws for a class of underactuated aerial systems. Two control methods are developed: coordinate-based and coordinate-free which are both generally applicable to aerial manipulation tasks. A simulated hexrotor vehicle equipped with a simple manipulator is employed to demonstrate the proposed techniques.