Observer-based Adaptive Backstepping Control for Time-varying Formation Tracking of Multi-UAV System

In this paper, a novel observer-based adaptive backstepping control scheme is proposed for time-varying formation tracking of multiple unmanned aerial vehicle (multi-UAV) system consisting of multiple nonlinear UAVs with unknown parameters and immeasurable states. The communication network among the UAVs is represented by a directed graph and a part of the UAVs cannot obtain the reference information directly. A state observer is designed to estimate the immeasurable states. An adaptive control scheme is developed by employing backstepping control strategy and the designed state observer. It is proved that the proposed scheme can guarantee that the UAVs maintain the formation shape while tracking the reference trajectory. Besides, all the signals of the closed-loop system are semi-globally uniformly ultimately bounded (SGUUB). Simulation example is provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.