Loitering Formation of Fixed-Wing UAV Swarm under Communication Delay and Switching Topology

Abstract

In this paper, we design a cooperative loitering formation guidance algorithm for the path-following formation of multiple fixed-wing UAVs. We are interested in the case of communication delays and switching topology. Our proposal has two main parts: path-following (lateral guidance) and path formation (longitudinal guidance). In particular, using a vector field approach, the former guarantees that the lateral distance between a fixed-wing UAV and its desired path converges in presence of wind disturbance. In the meantime, the latter proposes a cooperative path-following framework. We prove the convergence of the proposed method in uniform communication delays and switching topology. In addition, we give an upper bound of delays, which depends on the communication graph and a gain of a formation controller. Finally, we develop a robust hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) platform flight test to verify the feasibility of our proposed approach.