Formation tracking of unmanned aerial vehicle swarm systems with predefined formation reference and switching topologies

Abstract

Formation control problems for second-order unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm systems with switching topologies to achieve the time-varying formation and the predefined time-varying formation reference are investigated. The second-order UAV swarm systems considered are not only required to achieve the specified time-varying formation but also track the predefined time-varying formation reference, and the switching topologies are also taken into consideration. To achieve the predefined time-varying formation reference, a new time-varying formation protocol is proposed, and the formation problem is transformed into the consensus problem. Sufficient and necessary conditions for second-order UAV swarm systems modeled by double integrator to achieve the time-varying formation and the predefined time-varying formation reference are presented. Finally, a quadrotor formation platform consisting of three quadrotors is introduced. The simulation and experiment to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed formation tracking theory are performed.