Spatial Formation Control with Volume Information: Application to Quadcopter UAV's

This paper extends the distance-based formation control for the case of holonomic robots moving in 3D space. The approach is addressed for agents modeled as double-integrators with any undirected communication graphs. The control strategy uses a combined distance-based attractive-repulsive potentials to ensure convergence to the formation pattern avoiding possible inter-robot collisions. In order to avoid unwanted formation patterns that verify the distance constraints, each robot control law includes a volume condition which provides information about the unique desired position of each robot in the formation pattern. The proposed algorithm is tested by numerical simulations and extended to the case of quadcopters UAV's by an input-output linearization showing good behavior.