Three-dimensional multiple unmanned aerial vehicles formation control strategy based on second-order consensus

Abstract

Considering three-dimensional formation control for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles, this paper proposes a secondorder consensus strategy by utilizing the position and velocity coordinate variables. To maintain the specified geometric configuration, a cooperative guidance algorithm and a cooperative control algorithm are proposed together to manage the position and attitude, respectively. The cooperative guidance law, which is designed as a second-order consensus algorithm, provides the desired pitch rate, heading rate and acceleration. In addition, a synchronization technology is put forward to reduce the influence of the measurement errors for the cooperative guidance law. The cooperative control law, regarding the output of the cooperative guidance law as its input, is designed by deducing the state-space expression of both the longitudinal and lateral motions. The formation stability is analyzed to give a sufficient and necessary condition. Finally, the simulations for the three-dimensional formation control demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the second-order consensus strategy.

A Flexible Collision Avoidance Strategy for the Formation of Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

“…The output of the outer-loop is used as the input of the innerloop. As designing the flight control system is not the focus of this paper, it is omitted here, and more details can be found in our previous publication [30]. The formation control orders, which are generated by the collision avoidance strategy according to the multi-UAV requirements, are given to the flight control system.…”

“…A sophisticated flight control system based on state feedback has been designed for controlling the 6-DOF dynamic UAV in our previous study, which is utilized to correspond to the formation control orders in this paper. Please refer to our previous publication [30] for more details.…”

“…Simulations are performed with Matlab/Simulink, where five identical UAVs are utilized for verifying our collision avoidance strategy. Each UAV weights 85 kg with a wingspan of 2 m, and the definition of the parameters of the 6-DOF dynamic UAV model is given in [30]. Figure 8 shows the communication topology of the formation.…”

Fault-tolerant consensus of nonlinear agents considering switching topology in the presence of communication noise

“…These protocols are designed using the different branches of control theory, considering the agent dynamics and communication topology. Many researchers have addressed the consensus problem in their work which can be identified in a few categories like flocking, 1 formation control 2 and synchronisation 3 are some of the examples.…”