UAV Formation Flight and Collision Warning with Centralized Control of Ground Control Station

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are widely applied in many fields, and the application of UAV formation flights is also developing rapidly. But currently many widely used types of UAVs are difficult to work with distributed formation control theory. Therefore, this paper presents a centralized formation algorithm with a three-degree-of-freedom UAV model, and also builds up two collision detection models. After tested and verified in MATLAB/Simulink, the models and control law are exported to C++ code and embedded in Qt-based simulation platform and Ground Control System (GCS) and pass the test under the condition of manually cutting off the communication. The simulation platform provides UAV state data, and the GCS serves as Human-Machine-Interface (HMI) to show the state data and perform control law to make formation flight. With centralized control of the GCS, any UAVs can do formation flight without modification.