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Distributed Observer-Based Leader Following Consensus Tracking Protocol for a Swarm of Drones

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Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of cooperative control concerning the output synchronization of the linear time-invariant multi-input multi-output multi-agent system i.e., multi-unmanned aerial vehicle (a swarm of the drone), by designing observer-based consensus protocol with directed communication topology. Considering the leader following consensus tracking problem, an observer-based protocol is designed to obtain desirable output synchronization. The protocol design consists of a local observer for the leader drone and a distributed observer for the follower drones. Observer gains are optimized through a multi-step algorithm based on linear quadratic regulator controller and linear matrix inequalities. Most of the existing literature on cooperative control considers full state information for the controller as well as observer design. However, the protocol for the controller and observer design for consensus tracking of multi-unmanned aerial vehicles presented in this paper considers that only the relative partial states information from the corresponding neighboring drones are utilized. The designed algorithm is robust and guarantees that all the states of follower drones track the states of the leader drone and the consensus is achieved asymptotically even in the presence of external disturbances. Finally, considering the ideal and perturbed system, the efficacy of the analytical results are illustrated by comparative analysis using numerical simulations.

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Acknowledgements

This research is funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under the grant number 62003118.

Funding

This research was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China under the grant for Prof. Rui Weng having grant number 62003118.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Institute of Intelligent Control and Systems, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China

    Adeel Zaidi & Muhammad Kazim

  2. Faculty of Computing, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China

    Rui Weng

  3. School of Astronautics, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China

    Dongzhe Wang & Xu Zhang

Authors
  1. Adeel Zaidi
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  2. Muhammad Kazim
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  3. Rui Weng
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  4. Dongzhe Wang
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  5. Xu Zhang
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Contributions

(CA)Adeel Zaidi the idea of the paper, initial drafting of introduction and mathematical formulation, stability analysis and part of simulations were performed by Mr. Adeel Zaidi.

Muhammad Kazim the idea and write-up of simulation section in the first draft and part of simulations were performed by Mr. Muhammad Kazim.

Rui Weng after the first review, there were major revisions in the manuscript. For those revisions, we had to consult our lab professors. Prof. Rui Weng helped to incorporate the reviews and draft the revised version of the manuscript and response letter. He also guided first and second authors to carry out new simulations and to testify the paper results according to the reviewer comments.

Dongzhe Wang Prof. Dongzhe Wang helped to improve and extend the major revision related to the shortness of simulation chapter. The idea to perform the comparative analysis and show the output trajectories in three separate figures i.e. Figs. ??, ?? and ?? were also his contributions.

Xu Zhang last but not the least, Mr. Xu Zhang contributed in the design of new formation of drones as shown in Fig. ?? and the placement of drones to show the sparsity requirement as required by the reviewer #3. Furthermore, he also helped to correct the English grammar, structure of sentences for better readability, technical evaluation and proofreading of the revised manuscript.

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Correspondence to Adeel Zaidi.

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Zaidi, A., Kazim, M., Weng, R. et al. Distributed Observer-Based Leader Following Consensus Tracking Protocol for a Swarm of Drones. J Intell Robot Syst 102, 64 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-021-01401-6

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