Hierarchical UAV formation control for cooperative surveillance

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the problem of rigidly maintaining a formation of three unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), whilst surveying a region of interest following, as a team, a particular pre-defined (spiral) trajectory. The UAVs in the formation are constrained to fly at constant speeds and to maintain certain pre-defined inter-agent distances. A decentralized proportional-integral (PI) control scheme (involving certain nonlinear switching terms) is developed for the surveillance and formation maintenance tasks above, based on a hierarchical (i.e. leader-first follower-second follower) sensing and control structure. Show more