Distributed formation control of multi-UAV systems using relative information

An adaptive distributed control strategy is designed for the formation of multiple unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) groups by using only relative measurement information. A distributed estimator is first designed to get the estimate of the consensus error. Then, an adaptive distributed controller is proposed to realize the formation tracking with the relative measurements. Based on the position and velocity information, a control barrier function (CBF) algorithm is applied to achieve the UAV formation under safe position constraints. In addition, in order to break up and reorganize multiple UAV groups, the proposed controller is designed based on the time-varying network topology. It is proved that the closed-loop system is uniformly asymptotically stability. Simulation and experiment results indicate that the proposed strategy can achieve formation control of multiple UAVs under safety constraints based on the measurement of relative measurement information.