TY - JOUR A1 - Ali, Qasim A1 - Montenegro, Sergio T1 - Explicit Model Following Distributed Control Scheme for Formation Flying of Mini UAVs JF - IEEE Access N2 - A centralized heterogeneous formation flight position control scheme has been formulated using an explicit model following design, based on a Linear Quadratic Regulator Proportional Integral (LQR PI) controller. The leader quadcopter is a stable reference model with desired dynamics whose output is perfectly tracked by the two wingmen quadcopters. The leader itself is controlled through the pole placement control method with desired stability characteristics, while the two followers are controlled through a robust and adaptive LQR PI control method. Selected 3-D formation geometry and static stability are maintained under a number of possible perturbations. With this control scheme, formation geometry may also be switched to any arbitrary shape during flight, provided a suitable collision avoidance mechanism is incorporated. In case of communication loss between the leader and any of the followers, the other follower provides the data, received from the leader, to the affected follower. The stability of the closed-loop system has been analyzed using singular values. The proposed approach for the tightly coupled formation flight of mini unmanned aerial vehicles has been validated with the help of extensive simulations using MATLAB/Simulink, which provided promising results. KW - quadcopter KW - robustness KW - intelligent vehicles KW - rotors KW - mathematical model KW - aerodynamics KW - adaptation models KW - vehicle dynamics KW - unmanned aerial vehicle KW - distributed control KW - formation flight KW - model following Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-146061 N1 - (c) 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works VL - 4 IS - 397-406 ER -