Real-Time Leader-Follower Formation Control of Nano Quadcopters in the Framework of Ratio Control

In this paper, it is shown that a formation control problem can be handled in the framework of ratio control theory for the first time in literature. We define a ratio control problem from the formation control task that aims to maintain the relative positions of the agents during formation motion. It is shown that the basic objective of a ratio control, which is to keep the ratio between the outputs of two processes equal to a desired value, is similar to the one of Formation Control Structures (FCSs). Motivated with this resemblance, we firstly analyze widely employed Ratio Stations (RSs) and show that the presented RSs naturally define directional or bi-directional communication topologies. Thus, the RSs are symmetric or asymmetric FCSs. In the light of these findings, we propose a novel RS-FCS to solve a real-time formation problem of two nano quadcopter agents during formation motion. Various comparative results are presented to show that the proposed RS- FCSs result with satisfactory formation performances.