Stereo Camera Based Formation Control for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Abstract

The area of Formation Control has been extensively explored by researchers in recent years. The popularity of Formation Control to researchers is primarily do to its use to coordinate the movement of a swarm of robots. However, there are multiple algorithms that can coordinate the control of robotic swarm. In this paper, a novel leader-follower formation control algorithm was developed to control a formation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) using only stereo camera, Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs), without the need of feature or pattern matching. Stereo cameras are chosen for formation control purposes because they allow the camera to guarantee that the field of view of the cameras of the various UAVs always have some overlap. Assuring there are no gaps in the field of view of the UAVs is important for missions such as search and rescue. Two different control algorithms were developed: direct method, and PID control. The results were tested in a simulation environments consisting of non-erroneous non-linear dynamics to verify its robustness. A novel formation controller is successfully developed which uses GPS, IMU and stereo camera input, without the need for feature or pattern matching and the computed results verify the effectiveness of our developed algorithm.