Adaptive Formation Tracking Control of Multiple Vertical Takeoff and Landing UAVs With Bearing-Only Measurements

This article studies the leader-following formation tracking control problem of multiple vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) subject to uncertain parameters, in which the target formation configuration is defined by using the interneighbors’ bearing vectors. An adaptive formation control algorithm with bearing-only measurements is proposed under a hierarchical control framework. More specifically, a saturated adaptive distributed control force is developed in the position loop with bearing-only measurements. Since the bearing vectors with respect to the neighbors can be directly measured by low-cost onboard cameras, the proposed formation algorithm can be implemented without interagent communication. Subsequently, in the attitude loop, an adaptive hybrid control scheme via two modified Rodrigues parameters (MRPs) sets is proposed, which achieves the command attitude tracking globally and also avoids the unwinding problem of MRPs. Based on the Lyapunov stability analysis and hybrid theory, we prove that the overall closed-loop error system is globally asymptotically stable. Finally, we provide a numerical example to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm.