Unified Position-Attitude Control of A Nonlinear Quadrotor Swarm

In this paper, we propose a novel nonlinear feedback control law to maneuver a swarm of nonlinear quadrotors with interagent collision avoidance. In contrast to the predominant hierarchical control architectures and dynamics linearization in controller synthesis in the literature, we control the position and attitude of each drone simultaneously in one unified step, with no dynamics linearization involved at any stage. Our method is based on generalizations of Gauss’s principle of least constraint that allows higher order constrained dynamics and that identifies, stabilizes, and incorporates the time-varying sets of active constraints. The active constraints are asymptotically stabilized to the controlled space according to a generalized constraint stabilization to provide command control actions. Numerical results are provided for a swarm of up to 80 nonlinear quadrotors executing aggressive flights and for eight nonlinear drones swapping positions on a circle, attesting to the efficacy and efficiency of the proposed scheme.