Formation shape control of multi-UAV with collision avoidance

This paper presents an area-based shape controller for a swarm of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In this control method, the UAVs move as a group inside a desired area while maintaining a minimum distance among themselves. Various shapes of the desired area can be formed by choosing the appropriate objective functions. In multi-UAV formation flight control, each UAV only needs to communicate with neighboring UAVs rather than the entire community. The UAVs do not have specific identities within the group. Therefore, the proposed method does not require specific positions or attitude information of the UAVs inside the area and yet different formations can be formed for a swarm of UAVs. A Lyapunov function is presented for convergence analysis of the multi-UAV systems. Simulation results illustrate the performance of the proposed controller.