Nonlinear Model Predictive Control with Enhanced Actuator Model for Multi-Rotor Aerial Vehicles with Generic Designs

Abstract

In this paper, we propose, discuss, and validate an online Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) method for multi-rotor aerial systems with arbitrarily positioned and oriented rotors which simultaneously addresses the local reference trajectory planning and tracking problems. This work brings into question some common modeling and control design choices that are typically adopted to guarantee robustness and reliability but which may severely limit the attainable performance. Unlike most of state of the art works, the proposed method takes advantages of a unified nonlinear model which aims to describe the whole robot dynamics by explicitly including a realistic physical description of the actuator dynamics and limitations. As a matter of fact, our solution does not resort to common simplifications such as: 1) linear model approximation, 2) cascaded control paradigm used to decouple the translational and the rotational dynamics of the rigid body, 3) use of low-level reactive trackers for the stabilization of the internal loop, and 4) unconstrained optimization resolution or use of fictitious constraints. More in detail, we consider as control inputs the derivatives of the propeller forces and propose a novel method to suitably identify the actuator limitations by leveraging experimental data. Differently from previous approaches, the constraints of the optimization problem are defined only by the real physics of the actuators, avoiding conservative -- and often not physical -- input/state saturations which are present, e.g., in cascaded approaches. The control algorithm is implemented using a state-of-the-art Real Time Iteration (RTI) scheme with partial sensitivity update method. CONTINUES...

cs.RO cs.SY math.OC math.DS

References in corpus (4)

• Differential Flatness of Quadrotor Dynamics Subject to Rotor Drag for Accurate Tracking of High-Speed Trajectories
• Analysis of unconstrained nonlinear MPC schemes with time varying control horizon
• Full-Pose Tracking Control for Aerial Robotic Systems with Laterally-Bounded Input Force
• MATMPC - A MATLAB Based Toolbox for Real-time Nonlinear Model Predictive Control

Cited by in corpus (11)

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• Modelling, Analysis and Control of OmniMorph: an Omnidirectional Morphing Multi-rotor UAV
• End-to-end Reinforcement Learning for Time-Optimal Quadcopter Flight
• Geometric Tracking Control of Omnidirectional Multirotors for Aggressive Maneuvers
• Learning Model Predictive Control for Quadrotors
• Modular Adaptive Aerial Manipulation under Unknown Dynamic Coupling Forces
• A Perception-Aware NMPC for Vision-Based Target Tracking and Collision Avoidance with a Multi-Rotor UAV
• Exploring Deep Reinforcement Learning for Robust Target Tracking using Micro Aerial Vehicles
• EigenMPC: An Eigenmanifold-Inspired Model-Predictive Control Framework for Exciting Efficient Oscillations in Mechanical Systems
• LoL-NMPC: Low-Level Dynamics Integration in Nonlinear Model Predictive Control for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles