Self-Triggered Based Coordinate Control with Low Communication for Tethered Multi-UAV Collaborative Transportation

In this letter, a self-triggered based coordinate control scheme with low communication requirements is investigated for a team of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) collaboratively transporting a suspended payload. In most existing research on collaborative transportation, the limited communication ability of physical devices has rarely been studied. Hence, this letter suggests a self-triggered cooperative path-following coordinate control scheme for UAVs traveling along a given desired path and synchronously carrying out transportation mission. It is proven that the proposed coordinate control scheme can make communication discrete, thereby significantly reducing the amount of communication. The results of outdoor experiments verify the feasibility of the proposed strategy, and low-frequency communication is demonstrated.