Time-Varying Formation Tracking for UAV Swarm Systems With Switching Directed Topologies

Time-varying formation tracking (TVFT) control problems for a team of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with switching and directed interaction topologies are investigated, where the follower UAVs realize a given time-varying formation while tracking the leader UAV. A TVFT control protocol is firstly constructed utilizing local neighboring information, where the information of the leader UAV is only available to partial followers and the neighborhood can be switching. An algorithm composed of four steps is provided to design the TVFT protocol. It is proved that the UAV swarm system can realize the TVFT using the designed protocol if the dwell time for the switching directed topologies is larger than a fixed threshold and the TVFT feasibility condition is satisfied. Based on the ultrawideband positioning technology, a quadrotor UAV formation control platform with four quadrotor UAVs is given. The obtained theoretical results are applied to solve the target enclosing problems of the UAV swarm systems. A flying experiment for three follower quadrotor UAVs to enclose a leader quadrotor UAV is carried out to verify the effectiveness of the presented results.