Leader-following formation and heading control of networked quadcopters

This paper deals with leader-following formation control and heading synchronization for a group of quadcopters. Unlike most of the existing works that involve a complex design of nonlinear formation and heading control laws for quadcopters, this work proposes a simple linear law especially for quadcopters in leader-following formation. In fact, the quadcopter dynamics involves state variables being coupled nonlinearly. However, it is shown that the dynamics can be treated as a linear system via a feedback linearization scheme. Consequently, a linear formation and heading control law can be designed for the linear system such that (1) the group of quadcopters achieves a desired formation (desired relative altitude and hovering) through local information exchange; (2) follower quadcopters synchronize their heading angles with the leader's; and (3) the leader quadcopter moves along a prescribed path to guide the formation. Although the present work considers quadcopter dynamics only, the proposed methodology can also be applied to various attitude synchronization problems arising in space and robotic applications.