Decentralized Multi-Robot System for Formation Control of Quadcopters: The Integration Between the Virtual and Real World

Abstract

The main target of this paper is to propose a decentralized Multi-Robot Systems (MRS) architecture for formation control using quadcopters. The architecture consists of n virtual quadcopters implemented on the Gazebo software and a real quadcopter AR-Drone. The Robot Operating System (ROS) controls all quadcopters and manages the communication between them. Only one AR-Drone was used because it is enough to validate the integration between the virtual and real worlds. In order to control the position and formation of the quadcopter agents, three mathematical models were proposed to calculate the quadcopters paths in linear formation, the formation of polygonal figures with rotation, and the formation of polygonal figures with rotation and mobile reference point. In the simulations, it was possible to observe the displacement of the quadcopters in formation. However, in the real experiment, the trajectory in the formation control was partially observed due to some limitations presented on the system. Despite these problems, the integration between the virtual and real worlds has also been validated. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.