Decentralized Hybrid Formation Control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

TL;DR

This paper introduces a decentralized hybrid control method for UAV formation, using finite state machines and formal techniques to ensure collision-free, cooperative missions.

Contribution

It develops a modular, decentralized supervisory control framework for UAV formations, integrating formal methods for collision avoidance and mission execution.

Findings

Effective decentralized control for UAV formations.

Formal verification of collision avoidance.

Modular supervisor design enhances robustness.

Abstract

This paper presents a decentralized hybrid supervisory control approach for a team of unmanned helicopters that are involved in a leader-follower formation mission. Using a polar partitioning technique, the motion dynamics of the follower helicopters are abstracted to finite state machines. Then, a discrete supervisor is designed in a modular way for different components of the formation mission including reaching the formation, keeping the formation, and collision avoidance. Furthermore, a formal technique is developed to design the local supervisors decentralizedly, so that the team of helicopters as whole, can cooperatively accomplish a collision-free formation task.