Hierarchy-Based Adaptive Generalized Predictive Control for Aerial Grasping of a Quadrotor Manipulator

In this paper, an adaptive generalized predictive control(GPC) based on hierarchical control strategy is designed for a quadrotor with a robotic arm. For this nonlinear and coupled system, a two-layer control structure is adopted to achieve more precise trajectory tracking and keep the tracking performance after aerial grasping.The inner-layer controller is a proportional-derivative(PD) controller. The outer-layer subsystem is linearized by input-output linearization first and an adaptive generalized predictive controller is applied. The effectiveness of this approach is verified through the simulation using MATLAB/Simulink. A PD controller with feedforward control input is applied on such a system for a comparative study. Simulation results show that a better tracking performance can be achieved by the proposed strategy.