Research Proposal

Design of Formation Flight Control System for Team of Quadrotors using Consensus
Algorithm
Research Objectives
The whole system of formation controller will require a proven controller, and a team of at least three
quadrotors, each equipped with necessary equipment to be able to measure its own states (position,
velocity, attitude, heading, etc.), and to estimate its neighbors states.
To provide a proven controller, it must be designed, developed, and tested on a system on which it
will work on, i.e. a system that represents the dynamics of the quadrotors team, the dynamics of the
states measuring and estimating processes will be required. Therefore, building a valid model for
quadrotors team and its state measuring and estimating processes will become the first objective. The
next objectives will be designing, developing, and testing a controller that will work on the quadrotors
team.
Building a proper model that will be representative enough will require most of the research allocated
time and resources. Unless the quadrotors are of our own design, we will require performing a lot of
measurement to access its physical properties such as spatial dimension, mass, moment of inertia, the
propulsion systems response to command input, and etcetera. Most of commercial quadrotors are
already equipped with in-build essential control system, which includes necessary sensors, so that it
may be flown safely by most amateur pilots. But we may require adding more sensors to the system
so that the overall sensor system can provide the necessary measurement required by the controller.
The overall sensor system will work as a process and this process will be identified and modeled.