Formation control of multiple quadcopters using model predictive control

<p>This paper presents the formation control of a fleet of three small quadcopters in a motion capture environment. The dynamic model of a single quadcopter is derived for model predictive control (MPC) and then constraints are explained and expressed in an adequate manner to be included in the cost function for the optimization problem to be solved by the C/GMRES method. Two control architectures, centralized and decentralized, were implemented in the ROS framework and tested on the CrazyFlie quadcopter. First performances are assessed for a static reference, the formation regulation problem, then for a dynamic reference, the formation tracking one. Finally, computational cost of the MPC controllers is evaluated.