Leader-following formation control of quadcopters with heading synchronization

This paper deals with leader-following formation control and heading synchronization for a group of quadcopters. Unlike most of existing works that involve a complex design of nonlinear formation and heading control laws, this work proposes an almost linear control law for quadcopters in leader-following formation. In fact, the quadcopter dynamics involves state variables being coupled nonlinearly. However, it is shown that the dynamics can be treated as a linear system via a static feedback linearization scheme. Consequently, a linear formation and heading control law can be designed for the linear system such that (1) the group of quadcopters achieves a desired formation (desired relative altitude/position and hovering) through local information exchange; (2) follower quadcopters synchronize their heading angles with the leader's; and (3) the leader quadcopter moves along a prescribed path to guide the formation. Although the present work considers quadcopter dynamics only, the proposed methodology can also be applied to various attitude synchronization problems arising in space and robotic applications.