Three-dimensional distributed tracking control for multiple quadrotor helicopters
Journal of the Franklin Institute, Volume 353, No. 10, Year 2016
Notification
URL copied to clipboard!
This paper deals with the cooperative tracking control of a team of underactuated quadrotors in three-dimensional space when the reference signal is not available to all the vehicles. Using the Backstepping and filtering design technique and results from graph theory, a distributed cooperative controller consisting of two interconnected blocks is proposed. The first block, which is based on local distributed controllers, guarantees that the centroid of the three-dimensional formation asymptotically follows a desired path corresponding to the desired formation trajectory. The second block ensures that the attitude dynamics of the quadrotor will converge asymptotically to their actual values, which are constrained within a predefined set, such that singularities are avoided in the quadrotor's dynamics. Due to the coupling property between the translational and rotational dynamics, the equilibrium point of the complete closed-loop system is shown to be asymptotically stable. Numerical simulations are illustrated to show that the theoretical conclusions are effective.