Modeling and controller design of hydraulic rotorcraft aerial manipulator

Traditional Rotary-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (R-UAV) are mostly utilized to conduct surveillance. Installing a mechanical manipulator on R-UAV will result a Rotorcraft Aerial Manipulator (RAM) system. A RAM system enlarges the R-UAV´s application scope. The RAM system proposed by this research is composed of R-UAV and a miniature hydraulic manipulator. With the combined merits of the two systems, this RAM system has enhanced flexibility and is capable of fulfilling more tasks. The hovering mode dynamics model of the RAM is established referring to the working characteristics of the hydraulic manipulator. An LQR controller is used to control the planar motion of the hydraulic manipulator. The motion of the manipulator will exert coupled force and moment influence on the RAM system. This coupled influence is taken as a disturbance to the R-UAV system which is restrained by a robust controller. Finally, through simulation, the effectiveness of the established dynamics model and the proposed control strategy is verified.