Guidance and Control Law Design for a Slung Payload in Autonomous Landing: A Drone Delivery Case Study

This article presents a novel guidance and control design for a parcel tethered to a drone in its delivery mission. The proposed proportional-navigation-based guidance, integrated with custom-built control, enables to achieve autonomous payload landing. The novelty of the proposed method lies in two aspects: 1) the guidance law allows for soft landing and 2) the path-following control ensures the swing-free payload transportation that sets the solid foundation for landing. The development is verified by extensive simulations and further demonstrated by flight experiments.