RRT*-APF Path Planning and MA-AADRC-SMC Control for Cooperative 3-D Obstacle Avoidance in Multi-UAV Formations
Yuehao Yan, Songlin Liu, Rui Hao · Drones · 2025
To enable safe cooperative flight of multi-UAV formations in urban 3-D airspace with wind-field disturbances, we develop an integrated planning-control framework.The planning layer uses an APF-guided RRT* with continuous collision prediction and explicit velocity/acceleration limits, and compensates wind online.The control layer adopts a dual-loop MA-AADRC-SMC design. An adaptive ESO estimates disturbances for feed-forward cancellation, and an SMC term improves robustness and tracking accuracy. By coupling the planned trajectory with speed-weighted repulsive fields, the framework coordinates path and attitude in closed loop, enabling collision-free and overshoot-free formation flight in wind and clutter. Simulations show higher tracking accuracy and better formation stability than ADRC, PID and SMC. A Lyapunov analysis proves uniform boundedness and asymptotic stability. The framework is scalable to applications such as disaster assessment and urban air transport.