Abstract
We present a formation-control method for fixed-wing unmanned air vehicles (UAVs), where the desired relative positions between the agents are expressed in a leader-fixed coordinate frame, which is aligned with the leader’s velocity vector. The leader can be a physical agent (e.g., a UAV) or a virtual agent. We assume that each agent has relative-position feedback of its neighbor agents, where the agents’ neighbor sets are such that the interagent communication structure represents a strongly connected directed graph. Each agent also has feedforward of the leader’s position, velocity, acceleration, and orientation. The main analytic result shows that each agent converges to the desired relative positions with the other agents and the leader. We also present experiments demonstrating the leader-fixed formation-control algorithm with a group of fixed-wing UAVs. To implement the formation-control algorithm, we use middle-loop controllers to determine the roll, pitch, and throttle commands based on the controls computed by the leader-fixed formation-control algorithm. We present results demonstrating the formation-control method using software-in-the-loop simulations with three fixed-wing UAVs (one leader and two agents) as well as flight experiments with two fixed-wing UAVs (one leader and one agent).
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | AIAA Scitech 2019 Forum |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2019 |
Event | AIAA Scitech Forum, 2019 - San Diego, United States Duration: Jan 7 2019 → Jan 11 2019 |
Publication series
Name | AIAA Scitech 2019 Forum |
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Conference
Conference | AIAA Scitech Forum, 2019 |
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Country/Territory | United States |
City | San Diego |
Period | 1/7/19 → 1/11/19 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2019, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Inc, AIAA. All rights reserved.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Aerospace Engineering