Research On 3D Obstacle Avoidance Problem For Multiple Aircraft Formation

The requirement of multiple aircraft cooperative engagement is increasing with the development of modern military war. The artificial potential field(APF) method, is a common method to solve both formation control problem and obstacle avoidance control problem in the multiple aircraft formation cooperative control problem. The APF method has strong real-time processing ability, especially for pop-up obstacles, but the following problems exist in the APF method, the aircraft may stop moving because of zero potential point, the aircraft cannot avoid obstacles because of local minimum problem, and the aircraft may not have the ability of formation keeping. The vectorial artificial potential field(VAPF) method is proposed, an improved method is proposed based on the APF method. The relative models are established in this paper. The research work can be organized in the following aspects:1. The APF method for multiple agent formation obstacle avoidance problem is analyzed, based on domestic and international research work about the multiple agent formation obstacle avoidance problem, with the aircraft is regarded as a agent. The vectorial artificial potential field(VAPF) method is proposed based on the improved APF method. The rotational force and the force between two aircrafts are added to the real-time resultant force in the VAPF method, the aircraft velocity is decided by the acceleration. All these forces, accelerations and velocities are considered as vectors. Both the formation control problem and obstacle avoidance control problem are considered in the VAPF method.2. The new obstacle model, agent model, target model, formation model and resultant force model are established, and the obstacle avoidance type of multiple agent formation is improved in the research on multiple agent formation obstacle avoidance problem. All these models contain 2D and 3D models; and all these obstacle avoidance types are expanded to 3D from the 2D types. The complex 2D and 3D obstacle environment is designed by these complex obstacles. And steps of the VAPF method are summarized.3. Aircraft numerical simulations are simulated in 2D and 3D obstacles environment, these numerical simulations contain single aircraft and multiple aircraft formation simulation. The results of 2D and 3D obstacle avoidance numerical simulations are showed, these obstacles are avoided, and the formation is kept. The feasibility and validity for the obstacle avoidance problem of multiple aircraft formation based on the VAPF method is validated by these numerical simulations.4. In order to enhance the effect of visualization, the three-dimensional virtual reality system(TDVRS) is built on Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, MATLAB 2010 and XNA 4.0 software. The single aircraft obstacle avoidance numerical simulation is showed in the TDVRS.