Differential Flatness Based Path Planning With Direct Collocation on Hybrid Modes for a Quadrotor With a Cable-Suspended Payload

Abstract

Generating agile maneuvers for a quadrotor with a cable-suspended load is a challenging problem. State-of-the-art approaches often need significant computation time and complex parameter tuning. We use a coordinate-free geometric formulation and exploit a differential flatness based hybrid model of a quadrotor with a cable-suspended payload. We perform direct collocation on the differentially-flat hybrid system, and use complementarity constraints to avoid specifying hybrid mode sequences. The non-differentiable obstacle avoidance constraints are reformulated using dual variables, resulting in smooth constraints. We show that our approach has lower computational time than the state-of-the art and guarantees feasibility of the trajectory with respect to both the system dynamics and input constraints without the need to tune lots of parameters. We validate our approach on a variety of tasks in both simulations and experiments, including navigation through waypoints and obstacle avoidance.