Fully Distributed Low-Complexity UAV Formation Control With Fixed-Time Full-State Error Performance

This paper presents a fully distributed, low-complexity UAV formation controller design with fixed-time full-state error performance, which is able to address the difficulties in obtaining global information and suppressing external disturbances without observer or adaptive law in existing solutions. The position of neighboring UAVs is the only information to be exchanged, and desired state observer is not required, thereby reducing communication costs, which is well-suited to larger-scale UAV formation systems. The proposed control scheme has the capability to handle external disturbances without observer or adaptive law, simplifying the controller’s design and implementation process, reducing computational burden. Moreover, by imposing fixed-time performance constraints on tracking error and virtual error, fixed-time formation tracking error and virtual velocity tracking error can be achieved, which also improves the response speed and accuracy of UAV formation, making it more capable of meeting the time requirements of actual tasks and adapting to dynamically changing environments. Additionally, all closed-loop signals are rigorously proven to be semi-globally ultimately uniformly bounded. Finally, numerical simulation is conducted to verify the effectiveness of proposed control scheme.