Experimental Evaluation of Continuum Deformation with a Five Quadrotor Team

TL;DR

This paper experimentally demonstrates continuum deformation control in a team of five quadrotors, validating theoretical bounds and showcasing successful outdoor flight tests with real-time state estimation.

Contribution

It is the first experimental validation of continuum deformation cooperative control for quadrotors, extending theoretical results to real-world outdoor flight scenarios.

Findings

Successful outdoor flight demonstration of continuum deformation control

Characterized position error using motion capture and onboard sensors

Validated theoretical bounds on team containment despite tracking errors

Abstract

This paper experimentally evaluates continuum deformation cooperative control for the first time. Theoretical results are expanded to place a bounding triangle on the leader-follower system such that the team is contained despite nontrivial tracking error. Flight tests were conducted with custom quadrotors running a modified version of ArduPilot on a BeagleBone Blue in M-Air, an outdoor netted flight facility. Motion capture and an onboard inertial measurement unit were used for state estimation. Position error was characterized in single vehicle tests using quintic spline trajectories and different reference velocities. Five-quadrotor leader trajectories were generated, and followers executed the continuum deformation control law in-flight. Flight tests successfully demonstrated continuum deformation; future work in characterizing error propagation from leaders to followers is discussed.