Backstepping Control Design for Cooperative Flight of MAV/UAVs

This paper investigates the cooperative flight control of manned/unmanned aerial vehicles (MAV/UAVs). The backstepping control strategy is proposed for the MAV/UAVs cooperative flight. Firstly, a tracking controller is designed for MAV to achieve the stable trajectory tracking. Then for UAVs, the distributed leader-following formation control scheme is established to keep the desired relative position with respect to the MAV. The proposed control laws guarantee the overall stability of the MAV/UAV system. Theoretical proofs and numerical simulations are provided, which verify the effectiveness of proposed method.