Influence of Network Topology on UAVs Formation Control based on Distributed Consensus

Abstract

In the task of formation control, there are many autonomous agents with detection and communication capabilities, with positions defined in different reference coordinates. Through a consensus algorithm, agents reach a common understanding of information shared locally through a communication topology, allowing UAVs to move while following a reference trajectory and maintaining the desired geometric configuration. Motivated by the fact that the communication topology is essential for the task of coordinating multi-agent systems, in this article we investigate the influence and characteristics of the fixed communication network topology on the distributed consensus performance, considering four communication network models. The simulations are performed using a multi-agent software-in-the-loop simulation platform in a ROS/Gazebo architecture for the control and three-dimensional simulation of UAVs and Matlab/Simulink for the implementation and execution of the formation control algorithm based on consensus distributed with a leader-follower approach. We performed simulations for different parameters of the considered network topology models, using the same trajectory and formation shape. We present the results of simulation tests, visually and quantitatively evaluating the performance of the distributed consensus, and relating this performance to the communication network models considered in this work and the metrics extracted from these randomly generated communication topologies.