Distributed Formation and Reconfiguration Control of VTOL UAVs

Liao, Fang; Teo, Rodney; Wang, Jianliang; Dong, Xiangxu; Lin, Feng; Peng, Kemao

doi:10.1109/tcst.2016.2547952

Cited by 176 publications

(80 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…However, the centralized control schemes depend largely on a central command unit, ie, the leader for the leader‐follower scheme or the central controller for the virtual structure scheme. The main disadvantage lies in that the whole formation can hardly be maintained once the central command unit fails . To avoid the aforementioned issue caused by centralization, the distributed control with local information interactions has been proposed for the formation control problem, especially for VTOL UAVs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distributed hierarchical control for multiple vertical takeoff and landing UAVs with a distance‐based network topology

Zou

Meng

2019

Intl J Robust & Nonlinear

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Summary A distributed formation control algorithm is proposed for multiple vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in this paper. The neighboring information is obtained by active measurements rather than by nonactive communications as done in the current literatures. By properly expanding the distance‐based network topology structure between each pair of UAVs, a distributed algorithm is proposed such that the switching topology remains connected along the time. Since a VTOL UAV system is typically underactuated, a hierarchical idea is introduced to derive the control design procedure. More specifically, the studied formation control problem of multiple VTOL UAVs is first transformed into the consensus problem of their corresponding error systems. Then, a command force and an applied torque are synthesized for each VTOL UAV such that the error systems reach a consensus. It is demonstrated in terms of Lyapunov theory that the proposed distributed hierarchical control algorithm guarantees the formation realization of multiple VTOL UAVs while maintaining the network connectivity. Finally, simulations are performed to validate the theoretical results.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distributed hierarchical control for multiple vertical takeoff and landing UAVs with a distance‐based network topology

Zou

Meng

2019

Intl J Robust & Nonlinear

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“…As a special unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), helicopter has shown more flexible than fixed wing UAV in search and rescue, supervision and inspection, agricultural applications, wildlife observation, and so on. Formation control can be divided into centralized formation control and distributed/decentralized formation control, and the latter type formation is more suitable for large‐scale UAVs formation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, collision avoidance is an important issue for successful formation control. Liao et al provided a finite‐time formation control framework, where a class of nonlinear consensus protocols was designed and applied to time‐invariant formation, time‐varying formation, and trajectory tracking only for UAV second‐order integral system. Du et al studied the finite‐time formation control for leaderless quadrotor helicopters formation using backstepping technique, homogeneous theory, and Lyapunov theory .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The ADO is applied to cope with the external disturbances and model uncertainty with unknown bound. The proposed controller extends the asymptotical stability fully distributed protocol to practical finite‐time stability at the price of the error converging to a small neighborhood of zero. A modified finite‐time formation collision avoidance controller is designed for velocity loop to realize formation reconfiguration. The converging time of the method in the work of Yu et al is reduced largely.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The converging time of the method in the work of Yu et al is reduced largely. It solves the adaptive formation reconfiguration problem and improves the formation reconfiguration algorithm in the work of Liao et al in fully distributed formation and practical finite‐time stability. To the best of the authors' knowledge, there is no research in theory that proved that collision avoidance can be achieved in finite time based on potential energy function in fully distributed manner.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Finite‐time fully distributed formation reconfiguration control for UAV helicopters

Wang

Zong

Tian

et al. 2018

Intl J Robust & Nonlinear

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Summary This paper studies finite‐time fully distributed formation and reconfiguration control of multiple unmanned aerial vehicle helicopter with disturbances and uncertainty. Based on adaptive and terminal sliding‐mode control techniques, a disturbance observer‐based fully distributed control strategy is proposed, which is independent of least nonzero eigenvalue of Laplacian matrix and achieves practical finite‐time formation tracking for a moving leader without any additional condition. The proposed method is proved superior to the existing method in converging time. The finite‐time stability of the closed‐loop error is proved by the Lyapunov theory. Considering formation configuration changing as a result of a task change, a modified finite‐time fully distributed controller including potential energy function gradient terms with an adaptive law is proposed. The novelty of the reconfiguration controller is that an adaptive law is firstly integrated in the gradient items, then the asymptotical stability is extended to practical finite‐time stability. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the efficiency of the developed algorithm.

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Formation control of unmanned aerial vehicle swarms: A comprehensive review

Ouyang

Cong

et al. 2022

Asian Journal of Control

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The unmanned aerial vehicle formation plays a crucial role in numerous applications, such as reconnaissance, agricultural plant protection, and electric power inspection. This paper provides a comprehensive review and analysis of the unmanned aerial vehicle swarm communication networks and formation control strategies. First, the most commonly used unmanned aerial vehicles are introduced and compared. Next, the entire process of the formation task, from the formation assignment to the formation transformation, is detailed described. At last, the widely adopted communication networks are analyzed, and the existing formation control strategies of the UAV swarm are compared, which shows that the distributed formation control is superior to the centralized method and is the future development trend.

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Distributed Formation and Reconfiguration Control of VTOL UAVs

Cited by 176 publications

References 28 publications

Distributed hierarchical control for multiple vertical takeoff and landing UAVs with a distance‐based network topology

Distributed hierarchical control for multiple vertical takeoff and landing UAVs with a distance‐based network topology

Finite‐time fully distributed formation reconfiguration control for UAV helicopters

Formation control of unmanned aerial vehicle swarms: A comprehensive review

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