Integrated Optimal Formation Control of Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

In this paper, we investigate the formation control of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), specifically unmanned aircraft, in an obstacle-laden environment. The main contribution of this paper is to integrate the formation control, trajectory tracking, and obstacle/collision avoidance into one unified optimal control framework. A nonquadratic avoidance cost is innovatively constructed via an inverse optimal control approach, which leads to an analytical, distributed, and optimal formation control law. The stability and optimality of the closed-loop system are proven. In addition, the proposed optimal control law is dependent only on the information from the local neighbors, rather than all UAVs´ information. Simulation of multiple UAVs´ formation flying demonstrates the effectiveness of the integrated optimal control design with desired behaviors including formation flying, trajectory tracking, and obstacle/collision avoidance.