A decentralised control strategy for formation flight of unmanned aerial vehicles

This paper presents a methodology to solve formation flight problem for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). It employs a unique “extension-decomposition-aggregation” scheme to transform the overall complex formation control problem to a group of sub-problems. The decentralised formation longitudinal and lateral autopilots are designed to support the implementation of the formation flight and manoeuvring of UAVs. Simulation studies have been carried out to verify the performance and effectiveness of the presented cooperative flight strategy.