Track papers across labs, topics, and trends.
Search papers, labs, and topics across Lattice.
This paper introduces a novel task-adaptive admittance controller for human-quadrotor cooperative load transportation (CLT) that incorporates dynamic cable-length regulation via an actively-controlled winch. The controller accounts for the coupled dynamics of the quadrotor and cable, enabling adaptation to contact forces during CLT. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms conventional approaches in responsiveness and motion smoothness across loading, unloading, and transporting tasks, particularly under varying stiffness conditions.
Quadrotors can now nimbly adapt to human handlers during cooperative lifting tasks thanks to a new controller that dynamically adjusts cable length and accounts for coupled system dynamics.
The collaboration between humans and robots is critical in many robotic applications, especially in those requiring physical human-robot interaction (pHRI). Previous research in pHRI has largely focused on robotic manipulators, employing impedance or admittance control to maintain operational safety. Conversely, research in human-quadrotor cooperative load transportation (CLT) is still in its infancy. This letter introduces a novel admittance controller designed for safe and effective human-quadrotor CLT using a quadrotor equipped with an actively-controlled winch. The proposed method accounts for the system's coupled dynamics, allowing the quadrotor and its cable to dynamically adapt to contact forces during CLT tasks, thereby enhancing responsiveness. We experimentally validated the task-adaptive capability of the controller across the entire CLT process, including in-place loading/unloading and load transporting tasks. To this end, we compared the system performances against a conventional approach, using both variable and fixed cable lengths under low- and high-stiffness conditions. Results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms the conventional approach in terms of system responsiveness and motion smoothness, leading to improved CLT capabilities.