Enclosing Control of UAV Swarm With Distributed Neighbor Selection and Finite-Time Observer in Three-Dimensional Environment
Zhiqiang Zheng, Mengzhen Huo, Haibin Duan · IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I Regular Papers · 2025
The control of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm for enclosing a target in a three-dimensional (3D) environment presents significant challenges essential for collaborative hunting tasks. A novel enclosing control framework is presents to facilitate the enclosure of a dynamic target by a swarm comprising both informed and uninformed UAVs in this paper. Initially, a distributed neighbor selection strategy based on interaction state (DNS-IS) is developed to optimize communication links while preserving the connectivity for uninformed UAVs. Subsequently, a finite-time distributed target state observer (FTDTO) is designed to rapidly and accurately estimate the target state for each UAV, ensuring that uninformed UAVs achieve the same observational accuracy as informed ones. Furthermore, an enclosing control law utilizing artificial potential field functions is proposed to effectively guide the UAVs and stabilize the enclosing formation. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed DNS-IS, FTDTO and control law, demonstrating the framework’s ability to achieve and dynamically maintain the desired enclosing configuration around the target, thereby ensuring the operational accuracy of the swarm.