Distributed Formation and Reconfiguration Control of VTOL UAVs

• Published in: IEEE transactions on control systems technology Vol. 25; no. 1; pp. 270 - 277
• Main Authors: Fang Liao, Teo, Rodney, Jian Liang Wang, Xiangxu Dong, Feng Lin, Kemao Peng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.01.2017; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Collision avoidance; Collision dynamics; Convergence; Distributed control; Feedback control; formation control; Formation flying; multi-agent system; networked control; Nickel; Potential fields; Reconfiguration; Robust control; Robustness; Unmanned aerial vehicles; unmanned air vehicles (UAV); Vehicle dynamics; Vertical takeoff aircraft
• ISSN: 1063-6536; 1558-0865
• DOI: 10.1109/TCST.2016.2547952

In this brief, a novel distributed cascade robust feedback control approach is proposed for formation and reconfiguration control of a team of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) unmanned air vehicles (UAVs). This approach is based on dynamic communication network. It guarantees intervehicle collision avoidance and considers dynamic constraints of UAVs. In the outer loop of the cascade formation control, a potential field approach is used to generate a desired velocity for each UAV, which ensures that the team of UAVs can perform formation flying, formation rotating and reconfiguration, avoid intervehicle collision, as well as track a specified virtual leader. In the inner loop of the cascade formation control, the velocity of each UAV is designed to track its desired velocity generated by the outer loop, subject to dynamic constraints. The proposed approach is demonstrated via both simulation and flight test.