Volume – 3 Issue – 1 Article – 2

A Leader-Follower Trajectory Tracking Controller for Multi-Quadrotor Formation Flight

Diogo Ferreira1, Paulo Oliveira2, Afzal Suleman3
1 Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal
2 Instituto Superior Técnico, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Lisbon, Portugal
3 University of Victoria, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Victoria, BC, Canada
F IJAST 2022; 3 (1) DOI: 10.23890/IJAST.vm03is01.0102; Language: EN

The aim of this work is to design a control system based on modern control
methods to control flight formations of quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles. A
leader-follower methodology is implemented where the leader vehicle has some
predefined trajectory, and the follower vehicles are controlled in order to track
the leader while keeping a constant displacement. The formation control
system, responsible for the vehicle formation, considers, at first, only the motion
at a constant height, and secondly, the three-dimensional motion. In both cases,
the nonlinear control laws are derived based on Lyapunov stability theory and
the Backstepping method. The control laws are validated in simulation, resorting
to a realistic environment and vehicle models.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
Leader-follower
Lyapunov stability
Backstepping

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