Abstract
In the process of performing fixed-wing drone formations, it is usually necessary to perform a variety of formations according to mission requirements or environmental changes. However, performing such formation transformation during formation flight will face many technical challenges. In this paper, we first present a Six-Tuple State Coherence (STSC) model for fixed-wing drone formations, and based on this model, the definition of drone formation transformation is given. Moreover, a drone formation change algorithm (DFCA) is proposed. When a new formation is needed, the master node first adopts the centralized Hungarian algorithm to determine the location allocation scheme of the new formation, and then each node calculates and executes dubins paths distributedly to maintain the consistency of the formation yaw angle, and finally adjusts the speed of the nodes to ensure the formation of STSC. The prototype system conforming to DFCA algorithm is implemented on OMNET++ platform, and numerous simulation experiments are carried out. The experimental results show the feasibility of the DFCA algorithm and show that it can control the drone formation transformation at a lower cost.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Alonso-Mora, J., Baker, S., Rus, D.: Multi-robot formation control and object transport in dynamic environments via constrained optimization. Int. J. Rob. Res. 36(9), 1000–1021 (2017)
Beard, R.W., Lawton, J., Hadaegh, F.Y.: A coordination architecture for spacecraft formation control. IEEE Trans. Control Syst. Technol. 9(6), 777–790 (2001)
Bogdanowicz, Z.R.: Flying swarm of drones over circulant digraph. IEEE Trans. Aerosp. Electron. Syst. 53(6), 2662–2670 (2017)
Chen, J., Gan, M., Huang, J., Dou, L., Fang, H.: Formation control of multiple euler-lagrange systems via null-space-based behavioral control. Sci. China Inf. Sci. 59(1), 1–11 (2016)
Defoort, M., Polyakov, A., Demesure, G., Djemai, M., Veluvolu, K.: Leader-follower fixed-time consensus for multi-agent systems with unknown non-linear inherent dynamics. IET Control Theory Appl. 9(14), 2165–2170 (2015)
Dong, X., Yu, B., Shi, Z., Zhong, Y.: Time-varying formation control for unmanned aerial vehicles: theories and applications. IEEE Trans. Control Syst. Technol. 23(1), 340–348 (2015)
Duan, H., Qiu, H.: Unmanned aerial vehicle distributed formation rotation control inspired by leader-follower reciprocation of migrant birds. IEEE Access 6, 23431–23443 (2018)
Jaimes, A., Kota, S., Gomez, J.: An approach to surveillance an area using swarm of fixed wing and quad-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles UAV(s). In: Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on System of Systems Engineering, pp. 1–6, June 2008
Liao, F., Teo, R., Wang, J.L., Dong, X., Lin, F., Peng, K.: Distributed formation and reconfiguration control of VTOL UAVs. IEEE Trans. Control Syst. Technol. 25(1), 270–277 (2017)
Loria, A., Dasdemir, J., Alvarez Jarquin, N.: Leader-follower formation and tracking control of mobile robots along straight paths. IEEE Trans. Control Syst. Technol. 24(2), 727–732 (2016)
Mcgee, T.G.: Autonomous search and surveillance with small fixed wing aircraft. Ph.D. thesis, Berkeley, CA, USA (2006)
Paull, L., Thibault, C., Nagaty, A., Seto, M., Li, H.: Sensor-driven area coverage for an autonomous fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle. IEEE Trans. Cybern. 44(9), 1605–1618 (2014)
Pinciroli, C., Beltrame, G.: Swarm-oriented programming of distributed robot networks. Computer 49(12), 32–41 (2016)
Rafi, F., Khan, S., Shafiq, K., Shah, M.: Autonomous target following by unmanned aerial vehicles. In: Proceedings of SPIE 6230, Unmanned Systems Technology VIII, vol. 6230, May 2006
Tokekar, P., Vander Hook, J., Mulla, D., Isler, V.: Sensor planning for a symbiotic UAV and UGV system for precision agriculture. In: Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 5321–5326, November 2013
Wang, Y., Sun, T., Rao, G., Li, D.: Formation tracking in sparse airborne networks. IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 36(9), 2000–2014 (2018)
Whitzer, M., et al.: In-flight formation control for a team of fixed-wing aerial vehicles. In: Proceedings of International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), pp. 372–380, June 2016
Xianfu, Z., Liu, L., Feng, G.: Leader–follower consensus of time-varying nonlinear multi-agent systems. Automatica 52, 8–14 (2014)
Yu, D., Chen, C.L.P.: Automatic leader-follower persistent formation generation with minimum agent-movement in various switching topologies. IEEE Trans. Cybern. 1–13 (2018)
Acknowledgments
This work was supported in part by the National Key Research and Development Program of China, under Grant 2017YFB0802303, in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, under Grant 61672283.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering
About this paper
Cite this paper
Jin, C., Chen, B., Hu, F. (2019). A Drone Formation Transformation Approach. In: Zhai, X., Chen, B., Zhu, K. (eds) Machine Learning and Intelligent Communications. MLICOM 2019. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 294. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32388-2_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32388-2_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-32387-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-32388-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)