Towards a swarm of agile micro quadrotors

Abstract

We describe a prototype 73 gram, 21 cm diameter micro quadrotor with onboard attitude estimation and control that operates autonomously with an external localization system. We argue that the reduction in size leads to agility and the ability to operate in tight formations and provide experimental arguments in support of this claim. The robot is shown to be capable of 1850 °/sec roll and pitch, performs a 360 ° flip in 0.4 seconds and exhibits a lateral step response of 1 body length in 1 second. We describe the architecture and algorithms to coordinate a team of quadrotors, organize them into groups and fly through known three-dimensional environments. We provide experimental results for a team of 20 micro quadrotors.