Motion Capability Analysis for Multiple Fixed-Wing UAV Formations With Speed and Heading Rate Constraints

This paper analyzes the motion capability of multiple fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) formations by taking speed and heading rate constraints of individual UAVs into account. Unlike most of the existing literature investigating multi-UAV formation flying problems, which mainly focus on plan...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on control of network systems 2020-06, Vol.7 (2), p.977-989
Main Authors: Wang, Yuanzhe, Shan, Mao, Wang, Danwei
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aircraft configurations
Computer simulation
Control systems design
Fixed wings
Flexible formation
formation control
Formation flying
Formations
input constraints
Maneuverability
Measurement
multivehicle system
Planning
rigid formation
Robot kinematics
Trajectory
Trajectory analysis
unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)
Unmanned aerial vehicles
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Summary:This paper analyzes the motion capability of multiple fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) formations by taking speed and heading rate constraints of individual UAVs into account. Unlike most of the existing literature investigating multi-UAV formation flying problems, which mainly focus on planner/controller design in order to achieve desired configurations, this paper aims at providing a quantitative description of the UAV formation maneuverability, which can serve as a metric for evaluating formation trajectory plans. Three common formations, namely perfect rigid formation, semiperfect rigid formation, and flexible formation are considered in this paper. Motion capabilities of these formations are analyzed in terms of turning performance. In particular, the feasible set of the formation heading rate is employed as the evaluation metric, based on which the relationships among these three formations are discussed. It has been proven that perfect rigid formation suffers from a rather limited mobility, while flexible formation has the largest feasible set of the formation heading rate in some situations. An interesting finding of this paper is that flexible formation is not necessarily more agile than semiperfect rigid formation with the same formation width, due to the special stall speed constraint of fixed-wing UAVs. Besides rigorous mathematical derivations, simulations have also been performed to further support the theoretical analyses.
ISSN:2325-5870
2325-5870
2372-2533
DOI:10.1109/TCNS.2019.2929658