Trajectory design and control for aggressive formation flight with quadrotors

In this work we consider the problem of controlling a team of microaerial vehicles moving quickly through a three-dimensional environment while maintaining a tight formation. The formation is specified by a shape matrix that prescribes the relative separations and bearings between the robots. Each robot plans its trajectory independently based on its local information of other robot plans and estimates of states of other robots in the team to maintain the desired shape. We explore the interaction between nonlinear decentralized controllers, the fourth-order dynamics of the individual robots, the time delays in the network, and the effects of communication failures on system performance. An experimental evaluation of our approach on a team of quadrotors suggests that suitable performance is maintained as the formation motions become increasingly aggressive and as communication degrades.