Flatness-Based Aggressive Formation Tracking Control of Quadrotors with Finite-Time Estimated Feedforwards

In this paper we address a decentralized neighbor-based formation tracking control of multiple quadrotors with leader–follower structure. Different from most of the existing work, the formation tracking controller is given in one loop without distinguishing the motion control and attitude control by means of the theory of flatness. In order to achieve an aggressive formation tracking, the high-order states of the neighbors motion are estimated by using a proposed extended finite-time observer for each quadrotor. Then the estimated motion states are used as feedforwards in the formation controller design. Simulation and experimental results show that the proposed formation controller improves the formation performance, i.e., the formation pattern of the quadrotors is better maintained than that using the formation controller without high-order feedforwards, when tracking an aggressive reference formation trajectory.