Distributed Control for Formation Switch of Fixed Wing MAVs

Abstract

We propose a distributed control approach for formation switch of fixed wing micro aerial vehicles (MAVs). First, a multilayer system framework is designed for distributed formation control of fixed wing MAVs. Then, a specific control algorithm is proposed for on-the-fly formation switch. During the entire formation switching process, constraints such as a safe inter-MAV distance can be satisfied, by applying position-based dynamics on the conceptual centers around which the MAVs circle. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated by comparative experiments in a realistic robot simulator.