Motion Planning for Fixed-Wing DAV Formations Flight With Velocity and Heading Rate Constraints

Motion planning is one of the core technologies in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAY) formation flight. This paper proposes a method to plan the formation paths for fixed-wing UAYs, which allows fixed-wing UAYs to fly safely with desired formation configuration. The kinematics of each fixed-wing UAY in the formation system is described by a non-linear model with saturated angular speed and limited linear speed. Then, in order to reduce the formation tracking error during the formation flight, the limit of the leader UAY's heading angle rate is discussed in detail based on the leader-follower framework which fully considers the dynamic constraints of fixed-wing UAYs. Furthermore, based on the feasible set of the formation' heading rate, the optimal control theory is used for fixed-wing UAYs to solve the motion planning problems. Finally, the results of the numerical simulations are presented and analyzed to verify the effectiveness of the theoretical results.