Pigeon-Inspired Circular Formation Control for Multi-UAV System with Limited Target Information

The problem of cooperative circular formation with limited target information for multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) system is addressed in this paper. A pigeon-inspired circular formation control method is proposed to form the desired circular distribution in a plane based on the intelligent pigeon behavior during hovering. To reach the goal of prescribed radius and angular distribution, the controller is designed consisting of a circular movement part and a formation distribution part. Therein, the circular movement part is designed to make each UAV rotate around the specified circle at the same angular speed only using the relative position between the UAV and the target. The formation distribution part could adjust the angular distance between each UAV and its neighbors with the jointly connected network to reduce communication cost. To smooth the speed variation, nonlinear PID-type method is delivered throughout the evolution of the system. The convergence analysis of the proposed control protocol is presented using Lyapunov theory and graph tools. The effectiveness of the proposed control strategies is demonstrated through numerical simulations.