Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Supervisor

Dr. Abdelhamid Tayebi

Abstract

The coordinated motion control of multiple vehicles has emerged as a field of major interest in the control community. This thesis addresses two topics related to the control of a group of aerial vehicles: the output feedback attitude synchronization of rigid bodies and the formation control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) capable of Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL). The information flow between members of the team is assumed fixed and undirected. The first part of this thesis is devoted to the attitude synchronization of a group of spacecraft. In this context, we propose control schemes for the synchronization of a group of spacecraft to a predefined attitude trajectory without angular velocity measurements. We also propose some velocity-free consensus-seeking schemes allowing a group of spacecraft to align their attitudes, without reference trajectory specification. The second part of this thesis is devoted to the control of a group of VTOL-UAVs in the Special Euclidian group SE(3), i.e., position and orientation. In this context, we propose a few position coordination schemes without linear-velocity measurements. We also propose some solutions to the same problem in the presence of communication time-delays between aircraft. To solve the above mentioned problems, several new technical tools have been introduced in this thesis to overcome the deficiencies of the existing techniques in this field.

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