Hierarchical Sliding‐Mode Formation Control of Quadcopters Based on Adaptive Event‐Triggered Mechanism

This paper addresses the formation control problem of quadcopters subject to unknown external disturbances and limited computational resources. To this end, a hierarchical leader–follower formation control strategy based on adaptive event‐triggered control is proposed. A generic fourth‐order mathematical model suitable for quadcopter formations is first established under the leader–follower framework. Then, a hierarchical control architecture with guaranteed closed‐loop tracking performance is developed, in which the outer‐loop controller mitigates the adverse effects of external disturbances through parameter adaptation, whereas computational demands are significantly reduced by updating the adaptive law only at event‐triggering instants. Meanwhile, the physical thrust constraints of quadcopters are explicitly incorporated to generate accurate attitude and angular velocity reference commands for the inner‐loop nonlinear controller. Theoretical analysis demonstrates that the proposed control strategy ensures uniform ultimate boundedness and stability of the trajectory tracking error. Finally, numerical simulation results verify that the formation trajectories closely follow the desired paths, confirming the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed approach.