Formation Control of Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Using Virtual Leader and Point-to-Multipoint Communication

摘要

In this paper, a simple but robust formation control scheme that can be applied to small unmanned aerial vehicles is proposed. The proposed formation control scheme is based on the virtual leader approach, where formation members control their position in relationship to a common virtual leader. The most distinguishing feature of the proposed scheme is that only information on the virtual leader is communicated between formation members. This feature gives the control scheme a extremely high robustness to communication failures and unit losses. Numerical simulation shows that the formation can be properly formed even if only 5% of the total communication succeeds. It is also shown that wingmen's position can be estimated to some extent, using the information communicated.