Abstract: An assembly composed of multiple aerial vehicles is capable of achieving omnidirectional motion in SE(3). Meanwhile, such assembly has advantages in payload and fault tolerance capacity compared with a single aircraft. Because of these characteristics, it has the potential to become an ideal platform for manipulation and observation. The mechanism and structure of the assembly aerial platform is designed. Such a platform has the ability to adjust its six-dimensional pose simultaneously. The dynamics of the overall system is investigated. Using singular perturbation theory, the entire system is partitioned into two subsystems, the fast varying system which represents the rotational motion of each aircraft, and the slowly varying system which represents the overall motion of the integrated assembly. Since the configuration space of the aircraft is non-Euclidean space, the controller of the slowly varying subsystem is designed using the trajectory linearization control on the manifold. On this basis, the stability of the overall closed loop system is proved using the Lyapunov theory. The real time communication architecture among the different sub-aircraft is designed. Furthermore, the software and the hardware of the real world protype is developed. Both simulation and real-world tests are conducted, validating the feasibility of the mechanism and control design for the novel assembly containing multiple aerial vehicles proposed.

Key words: aerial vehicles assembly, omnidirectional motion, geometric control, bus communication, real-world flight