Flight formation control for multi-rotors with slung payload

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Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) hold great promise for applications as diverse as natural resource monitoring, infrastructure inspection (pipeline, railways), agriculture, mineral exploration, journalism, and search & rescue operations. This is the most vibrant sector of the aerospace industry, growing more quickly than any other segment. One emerging market of UAV applications is package delivery. From technology perspective, it is feasible yet there exist some technical challenges. Most UAVs (drones) in consideration for commercial applications are small sized to enjoy their portability and mobility, however they may not be able to carry large payload due to the capacity constraints. A large vehicle configuration, on the other hand, would discount the benefits of UAV operations in terms of flexibility and agility. This proposed research project offers an alternative solution, that is, to fly a group of small UAVs in coordination to share and carry package. The proposed research project is in collaboration with Drone Delivery Canada Inc. (DDC) with prototyping and proof-of-concept field flight demonstration to support the company's initiative in autonomous package delivery by UAVs. The novel technology may have disruptive impact on the delivery sector as it is scalable to meet various customer requirements. ****The proposed project will address the following technical aspects. 1) Dynamics; 2) Stability; and 3) Control. The overall research goal of this project is to design a complete system for multi-rotor fleet to cooperatively perform payload transfer through cable suspension system. The results are expected to be demonstrated by field flight experiments with DDC.****