Formation control for multiquadrotor aircraft: Connectivity preserving and collision avoidance

In this article, we investigate the formation control problem of multiquadrotor aircraft system subject to connectivity preservation and collision avoidance. First, based on the backstepping design method, a novel formation control algorithm is developed to enable multiquadrotor aircraft to move along the desired trajectory while becoming the predefined formation pattern. Meanwhile, the connectivity of the communication network is maintained and the collision among multiquadrotor is avoided. Second, for each quadrotor's desired attitude obtained by the formation controller, an improved finite-time attitude tracking law is designed to guarantee that the desired attitude can be tracked by the real attitude in a fast finite time. Finally, a numerical example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.