A Multi-Layer Control Scheme for a centralized UAV formation

This paper presents an application of the multi-layer control scheme to guide a formation of three unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in trajectory tracking missions. In such case, each part of the formation control problem is dealt by an individual layer, which is independent module dealing with a specific part of the navigation problem. These layers are responsible to generate the desired path of the formation, to provide the desired posture of the robots, and to establish the control signal of each robot to reach their desired positions. The formation controller here introduced is able to coordinate the robots to the desired formation, including the possibility of time-varying position and/or shape, while a nonlinear underactuated controller previously proposed is responsible to guide the UAVs to their desired positions. The stability analysis of the closed-loop system is demonstrated in the sense of Lyapunov, resulting that the formation errors are ultimately bounded. Finally, simulation results for a group of three quadrotors are presented and discussed to validate the proposed model and controller.

[1]  Rafael Castro,et al.  Quadrotors flight formation control using a leader-follower approach , 2013, 2013 European Control Conference (ECC).

[2]  George W. Irwin,et al.  Novel decentralised formation control for unmanned vehicles , 2012, 2012 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium.

[3]  Ignacio Mas,et al.  Centralized and decentralized multi-robot control methods using the cluster space control framework , 2010, 2010 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics.

[4]  Vijay Kumar,et al.  Cooperative Grasping and Transport Using Multiple Quadrotors , 2010, DARS.

[5]  Kang Li,et al.  A decentralised control strategy for formation flight of unmanned aerial vehicles , 2012, Proceedings of 2012 UKACC International Conference on Control.

[6]  Felipe Nascimento Martins,et al.  A multi-layer control scheme for multi-robot formations with adaptive dynamic compensation , 2009, 2009 IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics.

[7]  Rogelio Lozano,et al.  Modelling and Control of Mini-Flying Machines , 2005 .

[8]  R. Stephenson.  A and V , 1962, The British journal of ophthalmology.

[9]  Konstantin Kondak,et al.  Autonomously Flying VTOL-Robots: Modeling and Control , 2007, Proceedings 2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[10]  Farzaneh Abdollahi,et al.  A synchronization strategy for three dimensional decentralized formation control of unmanned aircrafts , 2011, IECON 2011 - 37th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society.

[11]  Mário Sarcinelli Filho,et al.  High-level underactuated nonlinear control for rotorcraft machines , 2013, 2013 IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics (ICM).

[12]  Delin Luo,et al.  UAV formation flight control and formation switch strategy , 2013, ICCSE 2013.

[13]  G. Raffo,et al.  An integral predictive / nonlinear H ∞ control structure for a quadrotor helicopter , 2009 .

[14]  A. S. Brandao,et al.  Embedding obstacle avoidance in the control of a flexible multi-robot formation , 2010, 2010 IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics.

[15]  Aníbal Ollero,et al.  Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems manuscript No. (will be inserted by the editor) Experimental Results in Multi-UAV Coordination for Disaster Management and Civil Security Applications , 2022 .

[16]  Danwei Wang,et al.  Cooperative Control of Multiple UAVs for Moving Source Seeking , 2013, 2013 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS).

[17]  Li Wei,et al.  A Solution to Cooperative Area Coverage Surveillance for a Swarm of MAVs , 2013 .

[18]  Matthew A. Garratt,et al.  Flight control of a rotary wing UAV using backstepping , 2010 .

[19]  Jing Yang,et al.  Design of formation flight control based on virtual body frame of the team formation , 2013, 2013 25th Chinese Control and Decision Conference (CCDC).

[20]  Guilherme V. Raffo,et al.  An integral predictive/nonlinear Hinfinity control structure for a quadrotor helicopter , 2010, Autom..

[21]  Vijay Kumar,et al.  Construction with quadrotor teams , 2012, Auton. Robots.

[22]  Delin Luo,et al.  Obstacle avoidance and formation regrouping strategy and control for UAV formation flight , 2013, 2013 10th IEEE International Conference on Control and Automation (ICCA).

[23]  A. Ollero,et al.  Decentralized strategy to ensure information propagation in area monitoring missions with a team of UAVs under limited communications , 2013, 2013 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS).