AirBender: Adaptive Transportation of Bendable Objects Using Dual UAVs

2026-05-07

AI Summary

This work addresses the challenge of cooperative aerial transportation of deformable objects, where inaccurate elastic models and limited actuation capabilities often degrade control performance or lead to catastrophic failures. To overcome these limitations, the authors propose an adaptive cooperative control strategy grounded in Lyapunov-based stability analysis. The approach enables two multirotor UAVs to asymptotically stabilize the system and accurately track desired trajectories without requiring an explicit model of the object’s elasticity, instead adapting online to its unknown deformation characteristics. Experimental results across diverse scenarios demonstrate high-precision trajectory tracking and safe payload transport, significantly enhancing robustness and manipulation capability for aerial systems handling uncertain deformable loads.

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.

Problem

• bendable objects
• dual UAVs
• aerial transportation
• adaptive control
• trajectory tracking

Innovation

• adaptive control
• dual UAVs
• bendable object transportation
• model-free deformation handling
• Lyapunov stability