Bearing rigidity maintenance for formations of quadrotor UAVs

摘要

This paper considers the problem of controlling a formation of quadrotor UAVs equipped with onboard cameras with the goal of maintaining bearing rigidity during motion despite the presence of several sensing constraints, that is, minimum/maximum range, limited camera field of view, and possible occlusions caused by the agents of the formation. To this end, a decentralized gradient-based control action is developed, based on a suitable ‘degree of infinitesimal rigidity’ linked to the spectral properties of the bearing rigidity matrix. The approach is then experimentally validated with five quadrotor UAVs.