Robust Adaptive General Formation Control of a Class of Networked Quadrotor Aircraft

This article is concerned with the consensus formation control problem of a class of networked quadrotor aircraft partially bounded and state-dependent perturbations. A general distributed consensus error model is first developed to formulate the formation behavior of the networked quadrotor aircraft. Then, by using adaptive techniques, virtual position control strategies are proposed to eliminate the impacts of perturbations, so that the following quadrotor aircraft can boundedly track the desired position trajectory with a satisfying pattern. Furthermore, based on the designed virtual position control strategies, the attitude reference angles are constructed and adaptive attitude control strategies are further designed to guarantee that the attitude angles track the reference angles asymptotically. In terms of the asymptotic tracking results of attitude control systems, the bounded consensus formation results are obtained based on the Lyapunov stability theorem. Numerical simulations are carried out to verify the efficiency of the designed position formation as well as attitude tracking control strategies of the networked quadrotor aircraft.