Formation control for quadrotor swarm systems: Algorithms and experiments

Formation control problems for quadrotor swarm systems are investigated. Firstly, for the formation control, the quadrotor is regarded as a point-mass system, and the dynamics of each quadrotor is modeled by double integrator. Then a consensus based formation protocol is presented for quadrotor swarm systems to achieve the desired time-varying formation. Formation control problems for swarm systems are transformed into consensus problems. Necessary and sufficient conditions for quadrotor swarm systems to achieve time-varying formations are proposed. Moreover, a quadrotor formation platform which consists of three quadrotors is introduced. Finally, simulation and experimental examples are presented for the quadrotor swarm system to achieve a time-varying formation respectively.