Flight Formation Control

In the last decade the development and control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has attracted a lot of interest. Both researchers and companies have a growing interest in improving this type of vehicle given their many civilian and military applications. This book presents the state of the art in the area of UAV Flight Formation. The coordination and robust consensus approaches are presented in detail as well as formation flight control strategies which are validated in experimental platforms. It aims at helping students and academics alike to better understand what coordination and flight formation control can make possible. Several novel methods are presented: - controllability and observability of multi-agent systems; - robust consensus; - flight formation control; - stability of formations over noisy networks; which generate solutions of guaranteed performance for UAV Flight Formation. Contents 1. Introduction, J.A. Guerrero. 2. Theoretical Preliminaries, J.A. Guerrero. 3. Multiagent Coordination Strategies, J.A. Guerrero, R. Lozano, M.W. Spong, N. Chopra. 4. Robust Control Design for Multiagent Systems with Parametric Uncertainty, J.A. Guerrero, G. Romero. 5. On Adaptive and Robust Controlled Synchronization of Networked Robotic Systems on Strongly Connected Graphs, Y.-C. Liu, N. Chopra. 6. Modeling and Control of Mini UAV, G. Flores Colunga, J.A. Guerrero, J. Escareño, R. Lozano. 7. Flight Formation Control Strategies for Mini UAVs, J.A. Guerrero. 8. Formation Based on Potential Functions, L. García, A. Dzul. 9. Quadrotor Vision-Based Control, J.E. Gomez-Balderas, J.A. Guerrero, S. SALAZAR, R. Lozano, P. Castillo. 10. Toward Vision-Based Coordination of Quadrotor Platoons, L.R. García Carrillo, J.A. Guerrero, R. Lozano. 11. Optimal Guidance for Rotorcraft Platoon Formation Flying in Wind Fields, J.A. Guerrero, Y. Bestaoui, R. Lozano. 12. Impact of Wireless Medium Access Protocol on the Quadrotor Formation Control, J.A. Guerrero, Y. Challal, P. Castillo. 13. MAC Protocol for Wireless Communications, A. Mendez, M. Panduro, O. Elizarraras, D. Covarrubias. 14. Optimization of a Scannable Pattern for Bidimensional Antenna Arrays to Provide Maximum Performance, A. Reyna, M.A. Panduro, A. Mendez.

This monograph introduces recent developments in formation control of distributed-agent systems. Eschewing the traditional concern with the dynamic characteristics of individual agents, the book proposes a treatment that studies the formation control problem in terms of interactions among agents including factors such as sensing topology, communication and actuation topologies, and computations. Keeping pace with recent technological advancements in control, communications, sensing and computation that have begun to bring the applications of distributed-systems theory out of the industrial sphere and into that of day-to-day life, this monograph provides distributed control algorithms for a group of agents that may behave together. Unlike traditional control laws that usually require measurements with respect to a global coordinate frame and communications between a centralized operation center and agents, this book provides control laws that require only relative measurements and communications between agents without interaction with a centralized operator. Since the control algorithms presented in this book do not require any global sensing and any information exchanges with a centralized operation center, they can be realized in a fully distributed way, which significantly reduces the operation and implementation costs of a group of agents. Formation Control will give both students and researchers interested in pursuing this field a good grounding on which to base their work.

Space agencies are now realizing that much of what has previously been achieved using hugely complex and costly single platform projects—large unmanned and manned satellites (including the present International Space Station)—can be replaced by a number of smaller satellites networked together. The key challenge of this approach, namely ensuring the proper formation flying of multiple craft, is the topic of this second volume in Elsevier’s Astrodynamics Series, Spacecraft Formation Flying: Dynamics, control and navigation. In this unique text, authors Alfriend et al. provide a coherent discussion of spacecraft relative motion, both in the unperturbed and perturbed settings, explain the main control approaches for regulating relative satellite dynamics, using both impulsive and continuous maneuvers, and present the main constituents required for relative navigation. The early chapters provide a foundation upon which later discussions are built, making this a complete, standalone offering. Intended for graduate students, professors and academic researchers in the fields of aerospace and mechanical engineering, mathematics, astronomy and astrophysics, Spacecraft Formation Flying is a technical yet accessible, forward-thinking guide to this critical area of astrodynamics. The first book dedicated to spacecraft formation flying, written by leading researchers and professors in the field Develops the theory from an astrodynamical viewpoint, emphasizing modeling, control and navigation of formation flying satellites on Earth orbits Examples used to illustrate the main developments, with a sample simulation of a formation flying mission included to illustrate high fidelity modeling, control and relative navigation

In this study, an automated formation control system for an aircraft formation comprised of one lead and multiple wing aircraft is analyzed. Second- order models of the C-130 aircraft are developed in order to accurately model the flying qualities of large aircraft. This automated formation control system is capable of controlling the C-130 aircraft in maneuvering formation flight, thus reducing the wing's pilot workload. During formation flight, the wing aircraft continuously measures the lead aircraft's relative position with an ideal on-board position sensor. This information, in addition to Proportional Plus Integral feedback control, is used to maintain the aircraft in formation. The control of each wing aircraft is assumed to be independent of other wing aircraft. Other than for nominal formation separation commands, no continuous communication is assumed between the formation aircraft. An analytical analysis of the formation control problem reveals that integral control is needed to achieve zero steady state error in the separation distances (after a formation maneuver is executed). This conclusion is confirmed using computer simulations. An analytical method of selecting the Proportional Plus Integral parameters is developed by identifying the dominant system dynamics and residues of the step response. In an attempt to reduce the fuel consumption of the wing aircraft during formation heading change maneuvers, an alternate control system is designed to conserve the energy of the wing. The resulting automated formation control system effectively maintains the formation of aircraft through a combination of velocity, heading, and altitude changes. These is zero steady state error for all maneuvers and separation distance change responses ... Flight control, Automated, Formation, C-130.

Small satellite technology is opening up a new era in space exploration offering reduced cost of launch and maintenance, operational flexibility with on-orbit reconfiguration, redundancy etc. The true power of such missions can be harnessed only from close and precise formation flying of satellites. Formation flying missions support diverse application areas such as reconnaissance, remote sensing, solar observatory, deep space observatories, etc. A key component involved in formation flying is the guidance algorithm that should account for system nonlinearities and unknown disturbances. The main focus of this book is to present various nonlinear optimal control and adaptive guidance ideas to ensure precise close formation flying in presence of such difficulties. In addition to in-depth discussion of the relevant topics, MATLAB program files for the results included are also provided for the benefit of the readers. Since this book has concise information about the various guidance techniques, it will be useful reference for researchers and practising engineers in the space field.

This book systematically describes the concepts and principles for multi-satellite relative motion, passive and near passive formation designs, trajectory planning and control for fuel optimal formation maneuvers, and formation flying maintenance control design. As such, it provides a sound foundation for researchers and engineers in this field to develop further theories and pursue their implementations. Though satellite formation flying is widely considered to be a major advance in space technology, there are few systematic treatments of the topic in the literature. Addressing that gap, the book offers a valuable resource for academics, researchers, postgraduate students and practitioners in the field of satellite science and engineering.

This book is based on the authors’ recent research results on formation control problems, including time-varying formation, communication delays, fault-tolerant formation for multiple UAV systems with highly nonlinear and coupled, parameter uncertainties, and external disturbances. Differentiating from existing works, this book presents a robust optimal formation approach to designing distributed cooperative control laws for a group of UAVs, based on the linear quadratic regulator control method and the robust compensation theory. The proposed control method is composed of two parts: the nominal part to achieve desired tracking performance and the robust compensation part to restrain the influence of highly nonlinear and strongly coupled parameter uncertainties, and external disturbances on the global closed-loop control system. Furthermore, this book gives proof of their robust properties. The influence of communication delays and actuator fault tolerance can be restrained by the proposed robust formation control protocol, and the formation tracking errors can converge into a neighborhood of the origin bounded by a given constant in a finite time. Moreover, the book provides details about the practical application of the proposed method to design formation control systems for multiple quadrotors and tail-sitters. Additional features include a robust control method that is proposed to address the formation control problem for UAVs and theoretical and experimental research for the cooperative flight of the quadrotor UAV group and the tail-sitter UAV group. Robust Formation Control for Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles is suitable for graduate students, researchers, and engineers in the system and control community, especially those engaged in the areas of robust control, UAV swarming, and multi-agent systems.

The main objective of this project was to provide a flight demonstration of formation control using UAV research aircraft models. This document will describe the efforts leading to the design, construction, and flight testing of formation control laws using three YF-22 research UAVs designed, built, and instrumented at West Virginia University (WVU). In the selected formation configuration, a radio control (R/C) pilot maintains ground control of the 'leader' aircraft while two autonomous 'follower' aircraft are required to maintain a pre-defined position and orientation with respect to the 'leader' aircraft. The report is organized as follows. First, a description of the aircraft test-bed construction and on-board payload systems will be provided. The following sections will describe the overall design of the formation control laws. Specifically, this design was based on a set of inner and outer loop control laws using a NLDI (non Linear Dynamic Inversion) approach. The implementation of the controller design featured a mathematical model obtained directly from flight data through a PID (Parameter Identification) study. Additional sections will provide a description of the on-board flight control software and simulation work prior to the flight testing activities. A final section will describe the results from an extensive flight testing program. The flight testing activities were articulated in several flight testing of 2-aircraft and 3-aircraft formations.

Assuming only neighbor-neighbor interaction among vehicles, this monograph develops distributed consensus strategies that ensure that the information states of all vehicles in a network converge to a common value. Readers learn to deal with groups of autonomous vehicles in aerial, terrestrial, and submarine environments. Plus, they get the tools needed to overcome impaired communication by using constantly updated neighbor-neighbor interchange.