Decentralized Cooperative Control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Based on Emergent Mechanism of Starlings

A novel decentralized control approach for unmanned aerial vehicles（UAVs）based on emergent collective behavior identified in starling flocks is proposed in this paper. With the self-organizing principle of starling flocking separation，alignment and cohesion behaviors，a fully distributed leaderless control is designed based on local interaction only. It is augmented by an adaptive switching event-triggered communication protocol，a novelty which greatly reduces the communication load，yet maintains swarming cohesion and formation stability rigorously. Via the Lyapunov stability theory，the formation error can converge to a boundary range，robustness to disturbances and partial communication burden. Ultimately，the numerical simulations are presented to verify the effectiveness of the theoretical results.