Self-organizing distributed target fencing of UAV swarm for an uncooperative target

This paper investigates the target fencing problem for an uncooperative, freely-moving unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm with limited detection capabilities. A self-organizing distributed target fencing strategy is proposed, comprising a target motion estimator, a cooperative target motion observer, and a cooperative self-organizing target fencing controller. Under this strategy, all UAVs can collaboratively observe the target’s position, velocity, and acceleration. Additionally, the UAV swarm cooperatively fences the target at a predefined altitude, ensuring UAVs’ velocity convergence and avoiding inter-UAV collisions. Furthermore, the self-organizing nature of the proposed strategy enables each UAV to exit or join the swarm during the fencing process, and the remaining UAVs can still accomplish target fencing through self-organization without adjusting any parameters of the active UAVs. These results are verified through rigorous theoretical analysis and validated via numerical simulations.