Leader-Follower Formation Control Of Quadrotors With Collision Avoidance Using Artificial Potential Field

This paper presents a collision-free virtual leader-follower formation control for a group of quadrotors using artificial potential field (APF) and proportional--derivative (PD)
controller. The proposed control approach consists of PD controllers that stabilise the
attitude, as well as for the position control. To avoid collision with obstacles, APF algorithm is used at the outer-most loop whereby the collision-free path is fed into the position control. Several simulation experiments were carried out to validate the proposed approach. Results show that the integration of APF to the controller were able to avoid obstacles.
Keywords: Formation control, multi-agent system, leader-follower, artificial potential field, unmanned aerial vehicle