Determining Minimum and Maximum Number of Agents Required for Planar Cable-Suspended Aerial Manipulation Available to Purchase

This paper proposes a method for optimal selection of number of agents in a cooperative multi-agent system for dynamic aerial transportation of a cable-suspended load along a desired trajectory. We consider the system of n planar quadrotors with a cable suspended load, show that this system is differentially flat, and study the effect of varying the number of quadrotors, load and quadrotor masses, on the maximum velocity of the load trajectory and minimum thrust required. We determine the minimum (maximum) number of agents required for traversing a load trajectory for various values of the load mass.