Optimal Design of UAVs Leader-Following Consensus Formation Control Based on Riccati Equation
Xu Zhu, Jiangtao Huang, Sheng Zhang, Zhengning Wang · 2023
Formation control is one of the key technologies for UAV swarm operation. With the growth of the formation scale, the computation and communication among the UAVs based on the centralized control will increase exponentially. The leader-following strategy, based on the distributed consensus formation control theory, may effectively alleviate this problem, and improve the reliability and safety of UAV formation flight. Since the values of the control gains directly affect the flight quality of the UAV formation, the determination of reasonable control gains is a key problem in the consensus formation control. To solve this problem, based on the Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) control theory and the Riccati equation, the feedback control gains are optimized to generate the optimal trajectory commands for the UAVs, including the velocity magnitude, the flight path angle, and the heading angle commands. It is shown that the optimized consensus controller realizes the rapid formation flight control of the UAVs, with smooth control commands.