Implementation of distributed consensus on an outdoor testbed

In this paper, a distributed multi-agent consensus algorithm with theoretically provable convergence properties is implemented outdoors with three quadrotors. These quadrotors communicate with each other over an incomplete communication graph. Each quadrotor computes its position using only GPS data and transmits this information to the neighbouring quadrotors using Xbee wireless modules. The relative position information from all the neighbours is used by each quadrotor to compute the required pitch and roll angles, according to the consensus algorithm. It is shown that this distributed control law successfully navigates all the quadrotors to an autonomously decided consensus point. Details of the implementation and the consensus experiment are presented.