Autonomous mission execution for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles with hierarchical-distributed methodology

A hierarchical-distributed methodology (HDM) is presented to implement the autonomous mission execution for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The main idea of HDM is to divide the event control law into the group and individual event control laws. The group event control law is focused on the mission events. The individual event control laws are focused on the task events and motion events. Such division is reasonable as it emphasizes the task management and dynamic control of the single UAV and simplifies the mission management of the multiple UAVs. The simulation results demonstrate that the closed-loop system designed with the ideas of HDM autonomously completes the designated mission of the formation flight.