Containment control for multiple quadrotors with stationary leaders under directed graphs

This paper studies the distributed containment control problem for networked multiple quadrotors with multiple stationary leaders under a directed graph which is the communication topology between the leaders and the followers for arbitrary initial states. Necessary and sufficient conditions on the communication topology are shown. The model of a quadrotor is divided into two subsystems, one is under-actuated with the states of horizontal coordinates, the other is fully-actuated with the states of vertical position and the yaw angle. For the first subsystem, we present a new control law using backstepping technique such that all followers´ states, horizontal coordinates, converge to the minimal hyperrectangle spanned by the corresponding states of the leaders asymptotically. For the second subsystem, due to the existence of uncertainties, a sidling-mode controller is given to compensate the uncertainty items. Furthermore, with the proposed controller, altitudes and the yaw angles of followers are driven to the minimal hyperrectangle formed by the leaders. Simulation results on networked multiple quadrotors are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed protocols.