Distributed Robust Formation Control of Heterogeneous Multi-UAVs With Disturbance Rejection

Abstract

This paper investigates the formation control of multiple heterogeneous quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The research focuses on developing a distributed robust formation control strategy to effectively manage the translational and attitude motions of the UAVs utilizing an active virtual leader. The communication of each agent in a connected environment is represented by a directed graph. To align with real applications, only a minimum of one agent is required to connect with the leader. The challenge associated with controlling systems is more complicated by the inherent heterogeneity of UAVs, characterized by variations in their model parameters and the presence of external disturbances in the system dynamics. A robust term is proposed to handle time-varying disturbances added to the closed-loop systems. A comprehensive mathematical proof and numerical illustrations are provided to validate the efficacy of the proposed formation control strategy.INDEX TERMS quadrotor, unmanned aerial vehicles, distributed robust control, formation control, external disturbances.