Curve Virtual Tube Planning and Distributed Control for Swarm UAVs With Complex Constraints and Disturbances
Mengshun Yuan, Mou Chen, Mihai Lungu, Tongle Zhou · IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics · 2025
To ensure the cooperative flight of swarm unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with complex constraints and disturbances, a curve tube flight method is proposed, integrating a curve virtual tube planning algorithm with a distributed controller. In the tube planning phase, the signed distance field (SDF) map and enhanced rapidly exploring random tree* (RRT*) algorithm are employed to generate a safe path. Subsequently, the minimum snap trajectory generation algorithm is used to generate the curve virtual tube. To ensure the cooperative flight within the generated tube, a distributed enhanced vector field controller is employed. Within this controller, the outer loop position control utilizes an enhanced vector field control strategy. Meanwhile, the inner loop velocity control adopts an adaptive control strategy based on a learning-based disturbance observer (LDO). Furthermore, this method addresses complex constraints, including velocity, input, safety, and swarm constraints. Finally, simulation and experiment demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for swarm UAVs.