Robust Sliding Mode Protocols for Formation of Quadcopter Swarm

This book presents several robust sliding mode protocols for achieving the formation and tracking of Quadcopter swarm for a given pattern. In entire book, the concept of leader-follower formation control of a multi-agent system is exploited for deriving the protocols and the graph theory is used to represent the communication between the Quadcopters. The book covers two types of formation protocols of the Quadcopter swarm namely, continuous-time sliding mode protocols and discrete-time sliding mode protocols. First, the continuous-time higher order sliding mode protocols using super-twisting algorithm are designed for formation using linear and non-linear models of Quadcopter. Then, the discrete-time sliding mode protocols using power rate reaching law, discrete-time super twisting algorithm, and exponential reaching law are presented. The protocols are thoroughly analysed for robustness, chattering, control effort, and convergence time for achieving the formation. Also, the stability conditions using the Lyapunov function are derived to ensure the stability of the swarm with each protocol. Further, each chapter includes extensive simulation and comparative studies to show the efficacy of each protocol. The book will be useful to graduate students, research scholars, and professionals working in the domain of civilian and military usage of the drone technology.



Dr. Axaykumar Mehta received B.E. Electrical Engineering (1996), degree from LD College of Engineering Ahmedabad, M.Tech. in Control Systems (2002) from IIT Kharagpur, and Ph.D. (2009) from IIT Bombay in systems and control engineering. Currently, he is acting as an Associate Professor in Electrical and Computer Science Engineering and as an Associate Dean (R&D) at Institute of Infrastructure, Technology,
Research and Management (IITRAM), Ahmedabad, India. Earlier, he has acted as a Director at Gujarat Power Engineering and Research Institute, Gujarat, India, an Associate faculty at Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, visiting professor at Institute of Automatic Control, Lodz University of Technology, Poland and a Research Associate at University of Cagliari, Italy. His research interests are sliding mode control, networked control and control of multi-agent systems and their applications to robotics, aerial vehicles, microgrid etc... He has published several research papers in reputed peer reviewed journals, and conference proceedings. He has contributed 4 monographs, 1 editorial book, and 3 conference proceedings on the research topics with Springer Nature Singapore. He is member of Technical Committee on Variable Structure and Sliding Mode Control under the aegis of IEEE
Control System Society, Fellow member - Institute of Engineers (I), Senior member - IEEE, IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IES), IEEE Control System Society, Life member of Indian Society for Technical Education (ISTE), and Systems Society of India (SSI). He is also recognized as a Chartered Engineer in Electrical Engineering by the Institute of Engineers (I).


Akash Modi received his B.Tech.(2021) in Electrical Engineering, and M.Tech.(2023) in Electrical
Infrastructure from Institute of Infrastructure, Technology, Research and Management (IITRAM), Ahmedabad, India. His current research interests are distributed sliding mode control, and control of multi-agent system and their applications. He has also worked in the area of design the microstrip patch
antenna, multi-layer antenna, and re-configurable array antenna for IRNSS, GPS, WiFi, and satellite communication applications. He has published a few research papers on the research topic with reputed publishers. He has received an Undergraduate Research Award-2 (URA-2) from the IITRAM in 2021.