LiDAR-Based Navigation of Tethered Drone Formations in an Unknown Environment

Bolognini, Michele; Fagiano, Lorenzo

doi:10.1016/j.ifacol.2020.12.2413

Cited by 17 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Evolving or machine learning algorithms applied to the control block were present only in a few articles [22,25,110], and reinforcement learning [43] over the PID control loop were even fewer. This dominance of the PID is mostly due to the robustness of the classic method that presents good results even in uncertain scenarios, such as when we do not know the wind behavior [35], the end mass attached to the tether (in a load transportation application) [42,60], or the configuration of the environment where the navigation occurs [93]. The results in the analysed publications point to the usage of classic PID control or a variation built over it, with little room for innovation on this block of the system's design.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some solutions applied their technique only to a simulated environment and used the data available in the simulation as their main perception source [92,95,96,105,111,112,[114][115][116]124,126,127]; other publications used data purely from the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) module of the UAV [94,98,106] or fused IMU data with some other sensor's data such as a camera mounted on the UAV [100,110,113], GNSS [107,109,197], ultrasound sensors [97], and sensors that measured the force [99,103,125], angle [103,120,123], and length [123] of the tether. Other perception sensors used in the publications includes GNSS (without IMU data) [119], Kinect [89], and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) [93]. One control problem particular to tUAV application is the consideration of the forces applied by the tether to the vehicle in the control loop.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Tethered Unmanned Aerial Vehicles—A Systematic Review

et al. 2023

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In recent years, there has been a remarkable surge in the development and research of tethered aerial systems, thus reflecting a growing interest in their diverse applications. Long-term missions involving aerial vehicles present significant challenges due to the limitations of current battery solutions. Tethered vehicles can circumvent such restrictions by receiving their power from an element on the ground such as a ground station or a mobile terrestrial platform. Tethered Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can also be applied to load transportation achieved by a single or multiple UAVs. This paper presents a comprehensive systematic literature review, with a special focus on solutions published in the last five years (2017–2022). It emphasizes the key characteristics that are capable of grouping publications by application scope, propulsion method, energy transfer solution, perception sensors, and control techniques adopted. The search was performed in six different databases, thereby resulting in 1172 unique publications, from which 182 were considered for inclusion in the data extraction phase of this review. Among the various aircraft types, multirotors emerged as the most widely used category. We also identified significant variations in the application scope of tethered UAVs, thus leading to tailored approaches for each use case, such as the fixed-wing model being predominant in the wind generation application and the lighter-than-air aircraft in the meteorology field. Notably, the classical Proportional–Integral–Derivative (PID) control scheme emerged as the predominant control methodology across the surveyed publications. Regarding energy transfer techniques, most publications did not explicitly describe their approach. However, among those that did, high-voltage DC energy transfer emerged as the preferred solution. In summary, this systematic literature review provides valuable insights into the current state of tethered aerial systems, thereby showcasing their potential as a robust and sustainable alternative to address the challenges associated with long-duration aerial missions and load transportation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Tethered Unmanned Aerial Vehicles—A Systematic Review

et al. 2023

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“…Catenary models are used to model the tether in [24], [25], however can be used only under quasi-static conditions. In addition, a system of single tethered quadcopters have also been studied in [26], [27]. Most of the work in tethered quadcopters focus on modeling the system, and developing control and planning algorithms.…”

Section: A Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tethered Power Supply for Quadcopters: Architecture, Analysis and Experiments

Jain¹,

Kotaru²,

de³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Tethered quadcopters are used for extended flight operations where the necessary power to the system is provided through the tether from an external power source on the ground. In this work, we study the design factors such as the tether mass, electrical resistance, voltage conversion efficiency, etc. that influence the power requirements. We present analytical formulations to predict the power requirement for a given setup. Additionally, we show the existence of a critical hover height for a single-quadcopter tether system, beyond which it is physically (electrically) impossible for the quadcopter to hover due to the increasing mass of the tether load and any additional current increasing resistive losses instead of getting delivered to the quadcopter. We then present experimental results a for single quadcopter tethered system and a system with two quadcopters connected to the same power tether. Power supply readings from the experiments in various configurations are consistent with the predictions from the analysis (within 5%), which experimentally validates the presented analysis. A two-quadcopter system powered via a single tether is flown through a corridor to demonstrate one of the capabilities of having multiple quadcopters on the same tether. * denotes equal contribution and listed alphabetically.† denotes equal advising contribution and listed alphabetically.

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“…Most of the quadrotor is powered by battery for motor driving and generate lift, which gives a limited time for quadrotor tasks performing. Flying with a power cable connected to power supply on ground [5], [1], [9] can solve the problem but the quadrotor can only be operated in a specific and relative open area. If the quadrotor can perch on arbitrary angle surface such as vertical wall to reduce its battery consumption while keeping environment monitoring using on-board camera or even for battery charging.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reinforcement Learning Trajectory Generation and Control for Aggressive Perching on Vertical Walls with Quadrotors

Pi¹,

Hu²,

Huang³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Micro aerial vehicles are widely being researched and employed due to their relative low operation costs and high flexibility in various applications. We study the underactuated quadrotor perching problem, designing a trajectory planner and controller which generates feasible trajectories and drives quadrotors to desired state in state space. This paper proposes a trajectory generating and tracking method for quadrotor perching that takes the advantages of reinforcement learning controller and traditional controller. The trained low-level reinforcement learning controller would manipulate quadrotor toward the perching point in simulation environment. Once the simulated quadrotor has successfully perched, the relative trajectory information in simulation will be sent to tracking controller on real quadrotor and start the actual perching task. Generating feasible trajectories via the trained reinforcement learning controller requires less time, and the traditional trajectory tracking controller could easily be modified to control the quadrotor and mathematically analysis its stability and robustness. We show that this approach permits the control structure of trajectories and controllers enabling such aggressive maneuvers perching on vertical surfaces with high precision.

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LiDAR-Based Navigation of Tethered Drone Formations in an Unknown Environment

Cited by 17 publications

References 18 publications

Tethered Unmanned Aerial Vehicles—A Systematic Review

Tethered Unmanned Aerial Vehicles—A Systematic Review

Tethered Power Supply for Quadcopters: Architecture, Analysis and Experiments

Reinforcement Learning Trajectory Generation and Control for Aggressive Perching on Vertical Walls with Quadrotors

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