WANG Jianhua

WANG Jianhua

Postgraduate Student, Automation, Centrale Pékin, Beihang University

Research on multi-UAV formation tracking control technologies and applications

Published:

Duration：Oct. 2017 - Jun. 2020

Keywords: Multi-UAV systems, Time-varying formation, Formation tracking, Gazebo, Cooperative experiment

Background

Formation tracking control for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems has received considerable interests in recent years due to its broad potential applications in civilian and military areas, such as drag reduction, radiation detection, target search localization, and telecommunication relay. In the past decades, many formation control approaches have been proposed in the robotics community, such as leader–follower, behavior, and virtual structure-based approaches. With the development of UAV technology and the increasing demand of formation tracking control for multi-UAV systems, more and more researchers investigate the formation tracking problems for multi-UAV systems with different constraints.

Research content

This project focuses on the formation tracking control problem for multi-UAV systems with maneuvering targets, and conducts in-depth research on adaptive formation tracking control methods. More specifically, the constraints like unknown target maneuvering acceleration, unknown global topology information, and limited target state observation are taken into account. The related formation tracking protocols are designed and the stability of the closed-loop system is analyzed. Finally, the feasibility of the designed formation tracking protocols is verified by virtual simulations and real multiple UAVs experiments.

My work

  1. Design of the multi-UAV cooperative formation tracking controller.

  2. Verification of the controller's stability via Matlab and Simulink simulations.

  3. Construction of the multi-UAV virtual formation platform based on ROS and Gazebo simulator.

  4. Development of a multi-UAV formation experimental platform based on the indoor positioning system.

Achievements

This video presents the multi-UAV formation tracking experiments based on the ARDrone UAVs and formation experimental platform. 👇