Performance of Sliding Mode and Consensus-based Control Approaches for Quadrotor Leader-Follower Formation Flight

Quadrotors are making a difference to numerous civilian and military applications. There are various approaches to realize formation flight control. In this paper, a comparison between sliding mode and second-order consensus approaches for quadrotor leader-follower formation flight was conducted. Sliding mode and second-order consensus algorithms were employed to design the formation controller for steady formation flight. Both leader and the follower quadrotors are controlled by proportional integral derivative controllers. The leader follows the desired trajectory while the followers follow the instruction calculated by the formation controller. Simulations are carried out to analyze the effect of these two approaches. The result indicates that the followers can follow the leader's trajectory and keep the formation fairy well under the control of both approaches. However, the sliding mode approach can achieve faster position convergence effect, while the second-order consistency approach has better disturbance suppression performance in case of disturbance.