Multiple UAVs configuration formation control via the dual quaternion method

The considered multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) formation control in this paper aims to design a control law to keep fixed-wing UAV flight with specified relative configurations (attitude and position) under predefined topology, of which each node is an underactuated dynamic system. In order to realize the stable formation flight, we proposed a control method, composing of the characteristics of fixed-wing UAVs with the advantages of dual quaternions to achieve and preserve formation configurations. The proposed formation control law is distributed by only using the neighbors' information, and without requiring to decouple the rotation and translation. Combining the consensus protocol and the property called Pairwise Asymptotic Stability (PAS), the overall system can be certified asymptotically stable. Finally, simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of this approach.