Distributed Observer-Based Leader Following Consensus Tracking Protocol for a Swarm of Drones

This paper addresses the issue of cooperative control concerning the output synchronization of the linear time-invariant multi-input multi-output multi-agent system i.e., multi-unmanned aerial vehicle (a swarm of the drone), by designing observer-based consensus protocol with directed communication topology. Considering the leader following consensus tracking problem, an observer-based protocol is designed to obtain desirable output synchronization. The protocol design consists of a local observer for the leader drone and a distributed observer for the follower drones. Observer gains are optimized through a multi-step algorithm based on linear quadratic regulator controller and linear matrix inequalities. Most of the existing literature on cooperative control considers full state information for the controller as well as observer design. However, the protocol for the controller and observer design for consensus tracking of multi-unmanned aerial vehicles presented in this paper considers that only the relative partial states information from the corresponding neighboring drones are utilized. The designed algorithm is robust and guarantees that all the states of follower drones track the states of the leader drone and the consensus is achieved asymptotically even in the presence of external disturbances. Finally, considering the ideal and perturbed system, the efficacy of the analytical results are illustrated by comparative analysis using numerical simulations.