AirBender: Adaptive Transportation of Bendable Objects Using Dual UAVs

Abstract

The interaction of robots with bendable objects in midair presents significant challenges in control, often resulting in performance degradation and potential crashes, especially for aerial robots due to their limited actuation capabilities and constant need to remain airborne. This paper presents an adaptive controller that enables two aerial vehicles to collaboratively follow a trajectory while transporting a bendable object without relying on explicit elasticity models. Our method allows on-the-fly adaptation to the object's unknown deformable properties, ensuring stability and performance in trajectory-tracking tasks. We use Lyapunov analysis to demonstrate that our adaptive controller is asymptotically stable. Our method is evaluated through hardware experiments in various scenarios, demonstrating the capabilities of using multirotor aerial vehicles to handle bendable objects.