Terminal Sliding Mode Control for the Formation of a Team of Quadrotors and Mobile Robots

This paper proposes a fast terminal sliding mode control (SMC) method for the formation of heterogeneous multi-agent systems (MASs) with a fixed topology using a virtual leader. The MAS consists of quadrotors and two-wheeled mobile robots (2WMRs). Fast terminal SMC is used as a means of directing the agents in order to achieve consensus and formation in a two-dimensional environment. The stability analysis with the resultant system shows that the system is stable given an arbitrary number of agents. Simulation results are shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme for a team of three unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and three unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) in cases with and without disturbances. Experimental results are also provided to help validate the formation controller.