Design of Multi-Criteria PI Controller Using Particle Swarm Optimization for Multiple UAVs Close Formation

Close formation flight is one of the most complicated problems on multiple Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) coordinated control. This paper proposes a new method to achieve close formation tracking control of multiple UAVs by applying Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) based Proportional plus Integral (PI) controller. Due to its simple structure and effectiveness, multi-criteria PI control strategy is employed to design the controller for multiple UAVs formation, while PSO is used to optimize the controller parameters on-line. With the inclusion of overshoot, rise time, and system accumulated absolute error in the multi-criteria performance index, the overall performance of multi-criteria PI controller is optimized to be satisfactory. Simulation results show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach.