Achieving cooperative transportation by teams of aerial robots has been attracting attention owing to its flexibility with respect to payloads and robustness against failures. In this paper, we propose a flexible decentralized controller for the number of robots and the shapes of payloads in a cooperative transport task using multiple single-rotor robots. Our controller is robust to mass and center of mass fluctuations and robot failures. Moreover, asymptotic stability against dynamics errors is guaranteed. Additionally, the controller supports heterogeneous single-rotor robots. Thus, robots with different specifications and deterioration can be effectively utilized for cooperative transportation. In particular, this performance is effective for robot reuse. To achieve the aforementioned performance, the controller consists of a parallel structure comprising two controllers: a feedback controller, which renders the system strictly positive real, and nonlinear controller, which renders the object asymptotic to the target. First, we confirm cooperative transportation using 8 and 10 robots for two shapes via numerical simulation. Subsequently, the cooperative transportation of a rectangle payload (with a weight of approximately 3 kg and maximum length of 1.6 m) is demonstrated using a robot team consisting of three types of robots, even under robot failure and center of mass fluctuation.

翻译：采用空中机器人团队实现协同运输因其在载荷适应性及故障鲁棒性方面具有灵活性而备受关注。本文提出一种适用于多架单旋翼机器人协同运输任务的柔性分布式控制器，可灵活适配机器人数量与载荷形状。该控制器对质量、质心波动及机器人故障均具有鲁棒性，且能保证针对动力学误差的渐近稳定性。此外，控制器支持异构单旋翼机器人，使得不同规格及存在性能退化的机器人均可有效参与协同运输——这一特性对于机器人循环利用尤为有效。为实现上述性能，控制器采用由两个子控制器构成的并行结构：反馈控制器使系统呈现严格正实特性，非线性控制器则使负载对象渐近收敛至目标状态。首先，通过数值仿真验证了8台与10台机器人针对两种形状的协同运输能力；随后，采用三类型号混合的机器人团队开展矩形载荷（约3kg，最大长度1.6m）协同运输实验，验证了其在机器人故障及质心波动工况下的有效性。