Formation control of VTOL UAV vehicles under switching-directed interaction topologies with disturbance rejection

Abstract

This paper addresses the adaptive formation control of a group of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) with switching-directed interaction topologies. In addition, to tackle the adverse effect of disturbances, a couple of smooth bounded estimators are involved in the procedure design. Exploiting an extraction algorithm, we take advantage of the fully actuated rotational dynamics, to control the translational dynamics of each vehicle. We propose a distributed control scheme such that all vehicles track a desired reference velocity signal while keeping a desired prespecified formation. In this framework, the underlying topology of the agents may switch among several directed graphs, each having a spanning tree. The stability of the overall closed-loop system is proved through Lyapunov function. Finally, simulation results are given to better highlight the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.

Time‐varying anti‐disturbance formation control for high‐order non‐linear multi‐agent systems with switching directed topologies

“…In [27, 29], although the whole uncertainties are estimated by terminal sliding mode observer and extended state observer (ESO), respectively, the formation tracking issues are discussed under the fixed interaction topologies. In [28], a couple of smooth bounded estimators are involved in the procedure design to compensate for the adverse effect of the constant disturbances. However, the uncertain dynamics during the formation of the multi‐UAV systems are not taken into account.…”

“…However, the uncertain dynamics during the formation of the multi‐UAV systems are not taken into account. Furthermore, the formation processes discussed in [27, 28] are supposed to be time‐invariant. Actually, as far as the authors’ knowledge goes, there are few systematic research achievements on ESO‐based anti‐disturbance formation for high‐order uncertain non‐linear multi‐agent systems with switching directed graphs.…”

“…First, the anti‐disturbance formation control discussed here is time‐varying. In [27, 28, 33], the formation issues with uncertainties are considered to be time‐invariant. It is notable that the conclusion for time‐invariant formations cannot be directly extended to time‐varying formation problems because the time derivative of the formation vectors will be brought into theoretical analysis process by time‐varying characteristic.…”

“…The majority of results on anti‐disturbance cooperative control mainly focus on the fixed topology case, as shown in [27, 29, 34, 35]. Although the interaction topologies adopted in [28, 33] can be switching, the dynamic of each agent is second‐order. Also, note that the switching characteristic of directed graphs makes it more complicated in the rigorous theoretical analysis process of the whole multi‐agent system under the ESO‐based control framework.…”

Iterative learning-based formation control for multiple quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles

“…The formation control of multiple quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is a central branch of research in recent years because of its potential applications in military, civilian, science, and technology. [1][2][3] In a formation control system, a group of UAVs are assembled to complete a task cooperatively, which is called as formation cooperation control. 4 It is noted that leader-follower strategy is one of the most commonly used methods due to its ease of implementation and analysis for the formation control system.…”