Unmanned aerial vehicle formation controller design via the behavior mechanism in wild geese based on Levy flight pigeon-inspired optimization

Abstract

This paper focuses on the control optimization problem of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) biomimetic formation. Since the up wash airflow produced by leading wild geese can save the energy consumption of wild geese in the flight, the proportion-integral-derivative (PID) controller based on the wild geese behavior mechanism was designed in UAV long distance formation flight. Since influenced by the gusty wind or other objective factors, UAVs usually deviate from their planed trajectory in formation flight. This paper proposes the UAV controller parameters’ tuning method utilizing levy flight pigeon-inspired optimization (PIO) so as to find a set of PID controller’s parameters which have strong robustness. Verified by simulations, it is obviously that the controller designed by levy flight PIO has more rapid performance and it improves the UAV stability and reliability in formation flight. The controller designed in this paper reduces the fuel consumption in long distance formation, while increasing the combat radius of UAVs.