Multi-quadrotor UAVs formation maintenance and collision avoidance control

For the problems of formation maintenance and anti-collision of multi-quadrotor UAVs and communication issues between UAVs，a formation planning control algorithm is designed based on a combination of virtual structure and artificial potential field. The virtual leader is used as the core to design the virtual structure formation which is based on the expected relative position information. The artificial potential field repulsion function is used to realize the anti-collision function and maintain the communication distance function of virtual structure particles，and the possible local deadlock problem is solved. The anti-stepping method is used to realize desired trajectory tracking by the UAVs. The uniformly ultimately bounded of the final value of the closed-loop system is proved by Lyapunov stability analysis. The simulation results of multiple quadrotor UAVs show that scattered UAVs can achieve rapid formation without collision，and flexibly complete effective avoidance of static and dynamic obstacles while maintaining the formation，and quickly change to a tight formation after discovering the target at the same time，verifying the reliability and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm for formation control. © 2022 AAAS Press of Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics. All rights reserved.