Admittance control for physical human-quadrocopter interaction

This paper analyzes the application of admittance control to quadrocopters, focusing on physical human-vehicle interaction. Admittance control allows users to define the apparent inertia, damping, and stiffness of a robot, providing an intuitive way to physically interact with it. In this work, external forces acting on the quadrocopter are estimated from position and attitude information and then input to the admittance controller, which modifies the vehicle reference trajectory accordingly. The reference trajectory is tracked by an underlying position and attitude controller. The characteristics of the overall control scheme are investigated for the near-hover case. Experimental results complement the paper, demonstrating the suitability of the method for physical human-quadrocopter interaction.