Distributed Cohesive Motion Control of Quadrotor Vehicle Formations

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on distributed cohesive motion control of 3-dimensional multi-vehicle systems considering individual agent dynamic behaviors as well as the overall multi-vehicle system. In this context, we examine maintenance of geometric formation of a swarm of autonomous quadrotor vehicles, i.e. maintenance of the distance between each agent pair in the swarm, during arbitrary maneuvers. A distributed scheme for the formation maintenance task is developed first. This coordination scheme is integrated with low level dynamic controllers designed for the agents considering practical kinematic and dynamic models for quadrotor vehicles. The distributed motion control scheme is implemented to move the vehicles whose initial positions satisfying the desired formation maintenance constraints are specified, to a set of final desired positions satisfying the same constraints cohesively without deviating from the desired geometric formation during motion. The developed coordination and control schemes are tested via a number of simulations.