Formation Control Of Fixed-wing UAV Based On Multi-agent System Consensus Theory

Fixed-wing UAVs have broad promising applications in military and civilian fields such as reconnaissance,detection,material transportation,and so on,due to their advantages of fast flight speed,long duration,and large load-carrying capacity.Currently,almost all countries have been following and strengthening their research and development investment in the field of UAVs.Compared with an individual UAV,a collaborative team of UAVs can accomplish complex tasks more effectively.The advantages of cooperative UAVs consist in more collection capability,reduced cost and increased maneuverability.For fixed-wing UAVs,a distributed formation control strategy is designed based on the consensus theory of multi-agent systems.There is no need for centralized allocation and scheduling.Each UAV only needs to communicate with their neighboring UAVs to achieve formation and target the expected trajectory.In addition,fixed-wing UAVs have maximum and minimum airspeed restrictions,that is,the airspeed must be constrained between two positive values.The control strategy in this paper satisfies this special speed constraint.The main work of this paper is summarized as follows:1.For the unicycle model which characterizes the dynamics of the fixed-wing UAV,based on the multi-agent systems consensus theory,a formation control strategy subject to linear velocity constraints is proposed,which strengthens the coupling between the UAV and its neighbors,and allows for arbitrary information flow among UAVs without adding complexity to the control law design and analysis.The formation controller also satisfies the maximum and minimum airspeed constraints,which ensures that the UAV’s linear velocity was constrained between two positive values.2.By invoking the fixed time stability theory,a class of distributed fixed-time tracking consensus observer is constructed,with which each UAV can observe the information of the expected trajectory within a fixed time only by communicating with its neighbors.A strict mathematical proof of the distrusted formation control strategy is given,and some numerical simulation examples are provided to verify the effectiveness of the control algorithm designed in this paper.