Research activities in the formation flight of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have increased substantially in the last few years. The formation flight of UAVs can be used in many applications, for example, surveillance, reconnaissance, target acquisition, infrastructure monitoring, aerial imaging, industrial inspection, and emergency medical aid. This paper designs a formation flight control system of multiple UAVs based on the PX4 Software In The Loop (SITL) simulator. This system uses a leader-follower approach method that one UAV is considered the leader of the group and receives waypoints from the ground station while the other UAVs form formation frame, considering their desired position relative to the leader. This system is implemented in C++ using the Robot Operating System (ROS) platform and is simulated in the Gazebo. The simulation results show that this system can be used to move the multiple UAVs in formation frame without receiving each position of all UAVs from the ground control station.

Keywords: UAV, ROS, PX4, SITL