PreGME: Prescribed Performance Control of Aerial Manipulators based on Variable-Gain ESO

An aerial manipulator, comprising a multirotor base and a robotic arm, is subject to significant dynamic coupling between these two components. Therefore, achieving precise and robust motion control is a challenging yet important objective. Here, we propose a novel prescribed performance motion control framework based on variable-gain extended state observers (ESOs), referred to as PreGME. The method includes variable-gain ESOs for real-time estimation of dynamic coupling and a prescribed performance flight control that incorporates error trajectory constraints. Compared with existing methods, the proposed approach exhibits the following two characteristics. First, the adopted variable-gain ESOs can accurately estimate rapidly varying dynamic coupling. This enables the proposed method to handle manipulation tasks that require aggressive motion of the robotic arm. Second, by prescribing the performance, a preset error trajectory is generated to guide the system evolution along this trajectory. This strategy allows the proposed method to ensure the tracking error remains within the prescribed performance envelope, thereby achieving high-precision control. Experiments on a real platform, including aerial staff twirling, aerial mixology, and aerial cart-pulling experiments, are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Experimental results demonstrate that even under the dynamic coupling caused by rapid robotic arm motion (end-effector velocity: 1.02 m/s, acceleration: 5.10 m/s$^2$), the proposed method achieves high tracking performance.

Predictive Kinematic Coordinate Control for Aerial Manipulators based on Modified Kinematics Learning

High-precision manipulation has always been a developmental goal for aerial manipulators. This paper investigates the kinematic coordinate control issue in aerial manipulators. We propose a predictive kinematic coordinate control method, which includes a learning-based modified kinematic model and a model predictive control (MPC) scheme based on weight allocation. Compared to existing methods, our proposed approach offers several attractive features. First, the kinematic model incorporates closed-loop dynamics characteristics and online residual learning. Compared to methods that do not consider closed-loop dynamics and residuals, our proposed method has improved accuracy by 59.6$\%$. Second, a MPC scheme that considers weight allocation has been proposed, which can coordinate the motion strategies of quadcopters and manipulators. Compared to methods that do not consider weight allocation, the proposed method can meet the requirements of more tasks. The proposed approach is verified through complex trajectory tracking and moving target tracking experiments. The results validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.