Distributed DETMs-based internal collision avoidance control for UAV formation with lumped disturbances

Abstract

This work focuses on the internal collision avoidance control for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) formation based on distributed dynamic event-triggered mechanisms (DETMs) and composite disturbance observers. To decrease the transmission rate of the redundant data and alleviate the communication network burden, a method of designing distributed event-triggered mechanisms with dynamic triggering threshold functions is proposed, which are related to tracking errors, triggering errors and consistency errors. By taking the lumped disturbances into account, which include the primary disturbance generated by exogenous system and the secondary disturbance effects from adjacent UAVs, a composite disturbance observer is constructed for each UAV to counteract the negative effects of the unknown disturbances. Moreover, by referring to the prescribed performance control method, a consensus controller, which can avoid the internal collision among the multiple UAVs, is presented for each UAV to achieve the control target. The stability of the closed-loop system can be guaranteed by using the Lyapunov stability theory, along with the gains of controller and observers being represented in explicit forms. Finally, a simulation example regarding six UAVs testifies the availability of the proposed control strategy.