Formation Control Design of Fixed-wing UAVs Based on Model Reference Adaptive Control

Abstract

Formation control is currently a popular field of research due to the increasing application areas of unmanned aerial vehicles. Of concern is the stability of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) formation while tracking especially under the influence of disturbances, and model parameter uncertainty. Since formation of the UAV formation while tracking, especially flying involves a mutual cooperation, consensus-based techniques are more suited such that a group of UAVs are collectively coordinated to perform some tasks. In this paper, a leader–follower formation control of homogeneous fixed wing UAVs based on model reference adaptive control with an integral error control compensation is presented. Model reference adaptive control is powerful and effective for handling uncertain and varying dynamics. This proposed distributed composite control strategy with a directed graph topology, although model-dependent can be effective to suppress disturbances affecting the vehicles, while achieving consensus-based tracking of a reference path. The numerical simulation results given show the applicability of this proposed control strategy.