The Implementation of Autonomous Formation Flight Capability to a Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle System Based on Fuzzy Logic Control

摘要

In this study, a guidance, navigation and control (GN&C) system based on fuzzy logic control design, namely wingman fuzzy navigation and control system (W-FNCS), is developed for autonomous formation flight and applied to a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system called Swallow UAV. It estimates attitude information from single antenna global positioning system (GPS) and inertial measurement unit (IMU), stabilizes the UAV to the desired attitude angle, and navigates the wingman (follower) vehicle to maintain the relative position with regard to the leader one through the leader vehicle's GPS position broadcasted by an inter-UAV network. The W-FNCS is designed by the flight test data, preliminary tested by a hardware-in-the-loop simulation environment (HILSE) and verified by a flight test procedure to ensure safety during the two vehicles' autonomous formation flight demonstration. The real flight results clearly show that the designed W-FNCS has achieved the desired functionality for the wingman vehicle with autonomous formation flight capability in following the leader one.