Autonomous formation flying of multiple UCAVs under communication failure

Control design for formation flying of multiple uninhabited combat air vehicles (UCAVs) is a highly complex problem due to the stringent requirements imposed by various tasks. We present a hierarchical supervisory control scheme that supports coordinated flight of multiple UCAVs. The hierarchy of commands in this scheme consists of four levels: mission control interface; structural commands; formation management; and individual UAV supervisor. Activities supported by the scheme include transfer of one or multiple UCAVs from one formation to another, creation of a new formation, or merging different formations. We also present a highly efficient failure detection and identification (FDI) system based on the interacting multiple model-Kalman filter (IMM-KF) approach, that can provide accurate state estimates of the system even in the presence of communication blackout.