Behavior-based cooperative control method for fixed-wing UAV swarm through a virtual tube considering safety constraints

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) swarm collaboration enhances mission effectiveness. However, fixed-wing UAV swarm flights face collaborative safety control problems within a limited airspace in complex environments. Aimed at the cooperative control problem of fixed-wing UAV swarm flights under the airspace constraints of a virtual tube in a complex environment, this paper proposes a behavior-based distributed control method for fixed-wing UAV swarm considering flight safety constraints. Considering the fixed-wing UAV swarm flight problem in complex environment, a virtual tube model based on generator curve is established. The tube keeping, centerline tracking and flight safety behavioral control strategies of the UAV swarm are designed to ensure that the UAV swarm flies along the inside of the virtual tube safety and does not go beyond its boundary. On this basis, a maneuvering decision-making method based on behavioral fusion is proposed to ensure the safe flight of UAV swarm in the restricted airspace. This cooperative control method eliminates the need for respective pre-planned trajectories, reduces communication requirements, and achieves a high level of intelligence. Simulation results show that the proposed behavior-based UAV swarm cooperative control method is able to make the fixed-wing UAV swarm, which is faster and unable to hover, fly along the virtual tube airspace under various virtual tube shapes and different swarm sizes, and the spacing between the UAVs is larger than the minimum safe distance during the flight.