The formation of unmanned aerial vehicle swarm

Abstract

The Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have played a much more important role in daily life, ranging from entertainment and military use, in which case UAV swarm is adopted as means to lower the operation cost, as well as to compensate for the insufficient performance of a single drone. However, sharp distinctions between individual drones and UAV swarm exist not only in the field of controlling, but in the area of aerodynamics as well. To conclude, the operator, instead of a team of engineers, needs to perform severe tasks with the help of several drones which act as a swarm rather than interfere with each other. Meanwhile, in order to improve the efficiency of UAV swarm, different formations are looked into from different fields, mainly aerodynamics and control engineering. This review will mainly focus on the aerodynamics performance of formations of swarming UAVs, both in close formation flight and extended formation flight. Comparisons will also be made to show the merits and demerits of these formations, providing convenience for path planning of different tasks.