Motion Coordination of Aerial Vehicles

The coordinated motion control of multiple vehicles has emerged as a field of major interest in the control community. This thesis addresses two topics related to the control of a group of aerial vehicles: the output feedback attitude synchronization of rigid bodies and the formation control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) capable of Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL). The information flow between members of the team is assumed fixed and undirected. The first part of this thesis is devoted to the attitude synchronization of a group of spacecraft. In this context, we propose control schemes for the synchronization of a group of spacecraft to a predefined attitude trajectory without angular velocity measurements. We also propose some velocity-free consensus-seeking schemes allowing a group of spacecraft to align their attitudes, without reference trajectory specification. The second part of this thesis is devoted to the control of a group of VTOL-UAVs in the Special Euclidian group SE(3), i.e., position and orientation. In this context, we propose a few position coordination schemes without linear-velocity measurements. We also propose some solutions to the same problem in the presence of communication time-delays between aircraft. To solve the above mentioned problems, several new technical tools have been introduced in this thesis to overcome the deficiencies of the existing techniques in this field

Motion coordination for VTOL unmanned aerial vehicles: attitude synchronisation and formation control

Motion Coordination for VTOL Unmanned Aerial Vehicles develops new control design techniques for the distributed coordination of a team of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles. In particular, it provides new control design approaches for the attitude synchronization of a formation of rigid body systems. In addition, by integrating new control design techniques with some concepts from nonlinear control theory and multi-agent systems, it presents  a new theoretical framework for the formation control of a class of under-actuated aerial vehicles capable of vertical take-off and landing. Several practical problems related to the systems’ inputs, states measurements, and  restrictions on the interconnection  topology  between the aerial vehicles in the team  are addressed. Worked examples with sufficient details and simulation results are provided to illustrate the applicability and effectiveness of the theoretical results discussed in the book. The material presented is primarily intended for researchers and industrial engineers from robotics, control engineering  and aerospace communities. It also serves as  a complementary reading for graduate students involved in research related to flying robotics, aerospace, control of under-actuated systems, and nonlinear control theory

Global Exponential Angular Velocity Observer for Rigid Body Systems

We present a uniformly globally exponentially stable hybrid angular velocity observer for rigid body systems designed directly on $SO(3)\times\mathbb{R}^3$. The global exponential stability result makes this observer a good candidate for a controller-observer combination with a guaranteed separation property. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed hybrid observer as a part of an attitude stabilization scheme.Comment: Errors have been fixed in another paper by the author

A Globally Exponentially Stable Hybrid Attitude and Gyro-bias Observer

This paper presents a hybrid attitude and gyro-bias observer designed directly on the Special Orthogonal group SO(3). The proposed hybrid observer, relying on a hysteresis-based switching between two configurations, guarantees global exponential stability using biased angular velocity and inertial vector measurements. Simulation results are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed observer.Comment: Errors have been fixed in another paper by the author