Affine Formation Stabilization of multiple UAVs via Active Disturbance Rejection Control

This paper studies affine formation control problem for multiple UAVs with unknown nonlinear dynamics and external disturbances. To deal with the uncertainties, we employ the active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) technique. In this scheme, all unknown quantities can be observed via the extended state observer (ESO). Based on the outputs of the ESO, a class of affine formation control protocol is designed using the stress matrix, under which the predefined time-varying formation can be achieved. It is shown that the affine formation stabilization errors as well as the estimation errors can be arbitrarily small by choosing appropriate control gains. Finally, simulation results are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.