Formation control of quadrotors via potential field and geometric techniques

In this paper, two leader-follower formation control methods are proposed for a fleet of quadrotors. The linear quadratic regulator (LQR) control technique is designed to stabilize the linear models generated at different points in the operating space. The leader-follower approach is used to achieve formation control where the position and the heading of the leader are used with offsets as references to be tracked by the followers. In the first method, the potential field technique is proposed to achieve the desired formation. The attractive potential field attracts the followers towards the leader while the repulsive potential field repulses every two neighboring followers in order to keep a required distance between them and also avoid the collision. In the second method, the followers' positions are dictated by the geometry of the desired formation shape. These followers' positions are expressed in equations that relate them to the leader position and then given to the followers as references to be followed. An extensive simulation is conducted to examine the validity of the results, and the quadrotor nonlinear model is used in all simulations.