A Cooperative Control Approach for Multi-quadrotor Formation in Agricultural Scenarios with Obstacles and External Disturbances

Abstract

This research aims to develop a robust cooperative control approach for the flight formation of multiple quadrotors in trajectory tracking tasks in agricultural scenarios with obstacles and external disturbances. For this purpose, a distributed autonomous control framework is proposed that integrates a guidance system and an advanced control system for each quadrotor under a leader-follower control scheme. The guidance system employs the Artificial Potential Field (APF) algorithm, which guarantees attraction to the target while avoiding obstacles. For the control system, a distributed consensus protocol based on an Adaptive Integral Fast Terminal Sliding Mode Control (AIFTSMC) is implemented, ensuring fast convergence and robust tracking of the reference trajectory, maintaining the alignment of the quadrotors throughout the entire flight mission. The validity of the proposed approach has been demonstrated through numerical simulations performed in Matlab/Simulink, implementing a representative agricultural scenario. The results show that the approach offers robust and efficient performance for multiple quadrotor flight formation in agricultural environments, even in the presence of external disturbances and obstacles.