CrazyMARL: Decentralized Direct Motor Control Policies for Cooperative Aerial Transport of Cable-Suspended Payloads

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Lorentz, Viktor, Wahba, Khaled, Auddy, Sayantan, Toussaint, Marc, Hönig, Wolfgang
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Lorentz, Viktor
Wahba, Khaled
Auddy, Sayantan
Toussaint, Marc
Hönig, Wolfgang
author_facet Lorentz, Viktor
Wahba, Khaled
Auddy, Sayantan
Toussaint, Marc
Hönig, Wolfgang
contents Collaborative transportation of cable-suspended payloads by teams of UAVs has the potential to enhance payload capacity, adapt to different payload shapes, and provide built-in compliance, making it attractive for applications ranging from disaster relief to precision logistics. However, multi-UAV coordination under disturbances, nonlinear payload dynamics, and slack-taut cable modes remains a challenging control problem. To our knowledge, no prior work has addressed these cable mode transitions in the multi-UAV context, instead relying on simplifying rigid-link assumptions. We propose CrazyMARL, a decentralized RL framework for multi-UAV cable-suspended payload transport. Simulation results demonstrate that the learned policies can outperform classical decentralized controllers in terms of disturbance rejection and tracking precision, achieving an 80% recovery rate from harsh conditions compared to 44% for the baseline method. We also achieve successful zero-shot sim-to-real transfer and demonstrate that our policies are highly robust under harsh conditions, including wind, random external disturbances, and transitions between slack and taut cable dynamics. This work paves the way for autonomous, resilient UAV teams capable of executing complex payload missions in unstructured environments. Code and videos can be found on the website: https://imrclab.github.io/CrazyMARL.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_14126
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle CrazyMARL: Decentralized Direct Motor Control Policies for Cooperative Aerial Transport of Cable-Suspended Payloads
Lorentz, Viktor
Wahba, Khaled
Auddy, Sayantan
Toussaint, Marc
Hönig, Wolfgang
Robotics
Multiagent Systems
Collaborative transportation of cable-suspended payloads by teams of UAVs has the potential to enhance payload capacity, adapt to different payload shapes, and provide built-in compliance, making it attractive for applications ranging from disaster relief to precision logistics. However, multi-UAV coordination under disturbances, nonlinear payload dynamics, and slack-taut cable modes remains a challenging control problem. To our knowledge, no prior work has addressed these cable mode transitions in the multi-UAV context, instead relying on simplifying rigid-link assumptions. We propose CrazyMARL, a decentralized RL framework for multi-UAV cable-suspended payload transport. Simulation results demonstrate that the learned policies can outperform classical decentralized controllers in terms of disturbance rejection and tracking precision, achieving an 80% recovery rate from harsh conditions compared to 44% for the baseline method. We also achieve successful zero-shot sim-to-real transfer and demonstrate that our policies are highly robust under harsh conditions, including wind, random external disturbances, and transitions between slack and taut cable dynamics. This work paves the way for autonomous, resilient UAV teams capable of executing complex payload missions in unstructured environments. Code and videos can be found on the website: https://imrclab.github.io/CrazyMARL.
title CrazyMARL: Decentralized Direct Motor Control Policies for Cooperative Aerial Transport of Cable-Suspended Payloads
topic Robotics
Multiagent Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14126