Energy-Efficient Collaborative Transport of Tether-Suspended Payloads via Rotating Equilibrium

2026-03-07

AI Summary

This work proposes a novel rotational equilibrium strategy for collaborative aerial transportation of tethered payloads, overcoming the limitations of conventional static equilibrium approaches. Traditional methods require aircraft to tilt in order to generate horizontal thrust, resulting in high energy consumption and a trade-off between inter-vehicle spacing and tether length. In contrast, the proposed approach enables multiple quadrotors to cooperatively maintain stable circular motion, leveraging centrifugal force to supply the necessary horizontal tether tension while each vehicle only needs to produce vertical thrust. This paradigm shift eliminates the constraints imposed by static configurations, significantly improving energy efficiency and tether configuration flexibility without compromising safety distances. Experimental results demonstrate up to a 20% reduction in power consumption compared to static schemes, thereby enhancing the practicality of the system.

Technology Category

• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Coordination and Collaboration
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems

Application Category

• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy

Abstract

Collaborative aerial transportation of tethered payloads is fundamentally limited by space, power, and weight constraints. Conventional approaches rely on static equilibrium conditions, where each vehicle tilts to generate the forces that ensure they maintain a formation geometry that avoids aerodynamic interactions and collision. This horizontal thrust component represents a significant energy penalty compared to the ideal case in which each vehicle produces purely vertical thrust to lift the payload. Operating in tighter tether configurations can minimize this effect, but at the cost of either having to fly the vehicles in closer proximity, which risks collision, or significantly increasing the length of the tether, which increases complexity and reduces potential use-cases. We propose operating the tether-suspended flying system at a rotating equilibrium. By maintaining steady circular motion, centrifugal forces provide the necessary horizontal tether tension, allowing each quadrotor to generate purely vertical thrust and thus reducing the total force (and power) required compared to an equilibrium where the thrusts are not vertical. It also allows for a wider range of tether configurations to be used without sacrificing efficiency. Results demonstrate that rotating equilibria can reduce power consumption relative to static lifting by up to 20%, making collaborative aerial solutions more practically relevant.

Problem

• collaborative aerial transportation
• tether-suspended payloads
• energy efficiency
• static equilibrium
• power consumption

Innovation

• rotating equilibrium
• energy-efficient transport
• tether-suspended payload
• collaborative aerial transportation
• centrifugal force