Altitude consensus based 3D flocking control for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle swarm trajectory tracking

This paper studies the 3D flocking control problem for unmanned aerial vehicle swarm when tracking a desired trajectory. In order to allow the unmanned aerial vehicle swarm to form the stable flocking geometry on a same horizontal plane, the altitude consensus algorithm is applied to the unmanned aerial vehicle altitude control channel, using the trajectory altitude as the external input signals. The flocking control algorithm is only performed in the horizontal channel to control the horizontal position of unmanned aerial vehicles. The distributed tracking algorithm, which controls the local averages of position and velocity of each unmanned aerial vehicle, is implemented to achieve the better tracking performance. The improved artificial potential field method is introduced to achieve the smooth trajectory when avoiding obstacles. The practical dynamic and constraints of unmanned aerial vehicles are also taken into account. Numerical simulations are performed to test the performance of the proposed control algorithm.