Multilayer self‐organized aggregation control for large‐scale unmanned aerial vehicle swarms

Abstract

SummaryThe cooperative control of large‐scale unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms to establish a complex configuration is one of the most challenging goals. The poor scalability of the network topology, inability to self‐organize the desired configuration and the separation of swarm configuration are the main obstructions that hinder the attainment of the goal. This paper studies the self‐organized aggregation control of large‐scale UAVs by designing a scalable distributed network architecture. We present a novel centerless and scalable multilayer graph model to solve the nonextensible problem of the traditional network topology. A large number of UAVs are organized with several interconnected and globally covered layers, and each layer consists of many undifferentiated clusters. Afterwards, a self‐organized aggregation control law using the potential function method is designed for UAVs to realize autonomous configuration and configuration swarming under the consideration of collision and obstacle avoidance.