Coupling Disturbance Modeling and Compensation for Aerial Manipulator in Highly Dynamic Motion

When a manipulator moves in a highly dynamic scenario with a large range of rapid motion, the coupling disturbances between the manipulator and the UAV in the aerial manipulator system (AMS) become very strong, which directly affects the ability of the AMS to perform aerial manipulation and even poses a threat to the safety of the system. The aim of this article is to address the strong coupling disturbance problem in the AMS through precise coupling disturbance modeling and compensation. First, considering the rapid changes in the center of mass (CoM) and the moment of inertia (MoI) of the system under a highly dynamic scenario, this article delves into the generation mechanism of the coupling disturbances and models them based on the variable inertia parameters. The proposed precise coupling disturbance model (CDM) makes good use of the state information of the system, which enables one to achieve accurate estimation of the coupling disturbances without the aid of external force and torque sensors. With the proposed model, the strong coupling disturbances in the AMS are compensated in a feedforward way during the controller design process. An indoor AMS experimental platform is developed for validation purposes. The experiments and simulation are conducted in a highly dynamic scenario, involving rapid movements of the manipulator across a large range. The experimental and simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed method for suppressing the strong coupling disturbances.