Elliptical Circumnavigation for Multiple Quadrotors With Regulatable Intervehicle Distance: Experimental Validation

Abstract

This article presents an elliptical circumnavigation control strategy for multiple quadrotors subject to uncertainties. At translational level, a novel horizontal elliptical guidance law capable of regulating the relative distance between different quadrotors and a vertical control law are synchronized to educe the translation controller. At rotational level, an USDE characterized by laconic constructure and simple parameter tuning, is introduced to estimate the unknown lumped uncertainties online. The primary advantage of this paper is that the elliptical circumnavigation with regulatable distance between circling quadrotors is achieved. Meanwhile, all the error signals in the closed-loop system are analyzed to be bounded. Finally, practical experiments verify the efficacy of suggested strategy.

Keywords

• Elliptical circumnavigation
• moving target
• unknown system dynamics estimator
• circular formation
• adjustable intervehicle distance
• quadrotors