  This paper presents a simulation testbed developed for testing and
demonstration of decentralized control algorithms designed for multi-agent
systems. Aimed at bridging a gap between theory and practical deployment of
such algorithms, this testbed provides a simulator with multi-agent systems
having quadcopter agents. It is used to test the control algorithms designed
assuming simple agent dynamics like a single or double integrator. This is
based on the fact that under certain assumptions, quadcopter dynamics can be
modeled as a double integrator system. A gazebo simulator with a physics engine
as ODE (Open Dynamics Engine) is used for simulating the dynamics of the
quadcopter. Robot Operating System is used to develop communication networks
and motion control algorithms for the different agents in the simulation
testbed. The performance of the test bed is analyzed by implementing linear
control laws such as position control, leaderless consensus, leader-follower
consensus, and non-linear control law for min-max time consensus. This work is
published as an open-source ROS package under MIT license at
https://github.com/Avi241/mascot. A docker image is also developed for easy
setup of the system.
