Super-Twisting Sliding Mode Control for a Formation of Fully-Actuated Multirotor Aerial Vehicles

The present paper is concerned with the robust attitude-position tracking control for a formation of heterogeneous fully actuated multirotor aerial vehicles equipped with fixed rotors and subject to matched model uncertainties and Lipschitz disturbances. Based on a geometrically consistent description of the control error in SE(3), a joint geometric attitude-position control law is designed using a super-twisting sliding mode approach. Trajectory commands for the formation are generated using a second-order polynomial S-curve model, which are designed in such a way that allow setting different time duration for the formation acquisition, position, and attitude commanded motions. The method is evaluated via numerical simulations using a formation of non-planar fully actuated hexacopters equipped with fixed rotors, showing to be effective and simple to implement and tune.