A Virtual Point-Oriented Control for Distance-Based Directed Formation and Its Application to Small Fixed-Wing UAVs

Abstract

This paper proposes a new algorithm to solve the control problem for a special class of distance-based directed formations, namely directed-triangulated Laman graphs. The central idea of the algorithm is to construct a virtual point for the agents who have more than two neighbors by employing the information of the desired formation. Compared with the existing methods, the proposed algorithm can make the distance error between the agents converge faster and the path consumption is less. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm is modified to be operable for the small fixed-wing UAV model with nonholonomic and input constraints. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by a series of simulation experiments.