TY - JOUR
T1 - A mixed-initiative formation control strategy for multiple quadrotors
AU - Karras, George C.
AU - Bechlioulis, Charalampos P.
AU - Fourlas, George K.
AU - Kyriakopoulos, Kostas J.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2021/12
Y1 - 2021/12
N2 - In this paper, we present a mixed-initiative motion control strategy for multiple quadrotor aerial vehicles. The proposed approach incorporates formation specifications and motion-planning commands as well as inputs by a human operator. More specifically, we consider a leader–follower aerial robotic system, which autonomously attains a specific geometrical formation, by regulating the distances among neighboring agents while avoiding inter-robot collisions. The desired formation is realized by a decentralized prescribed performance control strategy, resulting in a low computational complexity implementation with guaranteed robustness and accurate formation establishment. The multi-robot system is safely guided towards goal configurations, by employing a properly defined navigation function that provides appropriate motion commands to the leading vehicle, which is the only one that has knowledge of the workspace and the goal configurations. Additionally, the overall framework incorporates human commands that dictate the motion of the leader via a teleoperation interface. The resulting mixed-initiative control system has analytically guaranteed stability and convergence properties. A realistic simulation study, considering a team of five quadrotors operating in a cluttered environment, was carried out to demonstrate the performance of the proposed strategy.
AB - In this paper, we present a mixed-initiative motion control strategy for multiple quadrotor aerial vehicles. The proposed approach incorporates formation specifications and motion-planning commands as well as inputs by a human operator. More specifically, we consider a leader–follower aerial robotic system, which autonomously attains a specific geometrical formation, by regulating the distances among neighboring agents while avoiding inter-robot collisions. The desired formation is realized by a decentralized prescribed performance control strategy, resulting in a low computational complexity implementation with guaranteed robustness and accurate formation establishment. The multi-robot system is safely guided towards goal configurations, by employing a properly defined navigation function that provides appropriate motion commands to the leading vehicle, which is the only one that has knowledge of the workspace and the goal configurations. Additionally, the overall framework incorporates human commands that dictate the motion of the leader via a teleoperation interface. The resulting mixed-initiative control system has analytically guaranteed stability and convergence properties. A realistic simulation study, considering a team of five quadrotors operating in a cluttered environment, was carried out to demonstrate the performance of the proposed strategy.
KW - Aerial vehicles
KW - Formation control
KW - Mixed-initiative control
KW - Navigation functions
KW - Prescribed performance control
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U2 - 10.3390/robotics10040116
DO - 10.3390/robotics10040116
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85118250949
SN - 2218-6581
VL - 10
JO - Robotics
JF - Robotics
IS - 4
M1 - 116
ER -