Time-Varying Formation Control for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Theories and Applications

Formation control analysis and design problems for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm systems to achieve time-varying formations are investigated. To achieve predefined time-varying formations, formation protocols are presented for UAV swarm systems first, where the velocities of UAVs can be different when achieving formations. Then, consensus-based approaches are applied to deal with the time-varying formation control problems for UAV swarm systems. Necessary and sufficient conditions for UAV swarm systems to achieve time-varying formations are proposed. An explicit expression of the time-varying formation center function is derived. In addition, a procedure to design the protocol for UAV swarm systems to achieve time-varying formations is given. Finally, a quadrotor formation platform, which consists of five quadrotors is introduced. Theoretical results obtained in this brief are validated on the quardrotor formation platform, and outdoor experimental results are presented.