Title: Incentive Stackelberg game-based path planning for payload transportation with two quadrotors

Authors: Yaser Alothman; Wenzhong Zha; Dongbing Gu

Addresses: Control and System Engineering Department, University of Technology, Baghdad, Iraq ' Key Laboratory of Cognition and Intelligence Technology, China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, Beijing, China ' School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK

Abstract: This paper proposes a path planning approach to the task of transporting a cable-suspended payload with two quadrotors. The transporting system is provided with a desired payload path which is predefined by the user without the consideration of system dynamics. The path planning problem is to find the optimal paths for the quadrotors, which can make the payload move along the closest path to the desired one under the constraint of system dynamics. This problem is formulated as an incentive dynamic Stackelberg game where one quadrotor plays a leader role while the other plays a follower role. By using an incentive strategy, a game solution can be found based on the linearised dynamic system. Some simulation results are provided to show the performance of the proposed path planning approach. The planned paths are also used in real experiments where the paths are tracked by two quadrotors using PID controllers.

Keywords: UAV path planning; incentive dynamic Stackelberg game; aerial transportation; multiple quadrotor systems.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMIC.2019.105974

International Journal of Modelling, Identification and Control, 2019 Vol.33 No.3, pp.216 - 224

Received: 05 Feb 2019
Accepted: 18 Jul 2019
Published online: 23 Mar 2020 *

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