Efficient Communication Leader-Wingman Flight Formation Control

TL;DR

This paper introduces an event-triggered control scheme for fixed-wing autonomous flight formation, reducing communication needs while ensuring convergence to the desired formation despite bandwidth limitations.

Contribution

It proposes an asynchronous, event-triggered control method tailored for fixed-wing aircraft formation, addressing communication constraints and improving efficiency.

Findings

Reduced communication frequency through event-triggered control

Achieved stable formation convergence despite asynchronous updates

Enhanced efficiency in autonomous flight formation control

Abstract

This paper considers autonomous flight formation of fixed-wing air vehicles. Due to several issues such as limitations on communication bandwidth and low observability requirements, an asynchronous control and communication approach is designed in order to reduce the number of updates between the vehicles. With the implementation of an event-triggered controller, it is possible to obtain a more efficient communication scheme while also achieving the convergence properties of the desired formation.