Flight Formation Control
Mario Innocenti, Lorenzo Pollini · Encyclopedia of Aerospace Engineering · 2010
Abstract This chapter presents an overview of the main issues relating to guidance and control of aircraft flying in a formation. Formation flight is a demanding task when performed manually, and it is a challenge for the flight control engineer, when performed in an automated fashion or by autonomous unmanned vehicles. The chapter focuses primarily on the investigation of possible formation structures to be used in an operational environment, with emphasis on optimization with respect to data information transfer among the elements (nodes) of the formation itself. The final objective is the capability of maintaining a formation in the presence of a failure of one of the vehicles/components, such as the loss of an aircraft, with a high degree of autonomy and possibly without intervention from ground and/or command operators. Although the emphasis is on unmanned aircraft, the principles could be extended to automated manned formation flight as well.