Decentralized formation control of quadcopters using feedback linearization

Abstract

This paper proposes a decentralized formation control scheme for a group of quadcopters using feedback linearization. Unlike most of the existing works that involve a complex design of nonlinear formation control laws, this work simplifies the design to yield an almost linear control law for under-actuated nonlinear quadcopters. In fact, a singularity-free dynamic inversion scheme is utilized such that the quadcopter dynamics can be treated as a linear system. Consequently, a linear formation control law can be designed for the resulting linear system to achieve desired positions and an identical heading angle through local information exchanges only. Although the present work considers quadcopter dynamics only, the proposed methodology can also be directly applied to attitude synchronization problems arising in space and robotic applications.