Target tracking using multiple unmanned aerial vehicles: Graph theoretic nonlinear control approach

Abstract

This paper develops a cooperative controller for multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) with application to target tracking. The cooperation between the UAVs is established based on an algebraic graph connection and the target information is provided externally by pinning it into a subset of the network. A backstepping-like technique is employed to design a consensus-based controller for each UAV in order to achieve target tracking in 3-D. The proposed controller computes commanded signals for the speed, flight path angle, and heading angle to track the target. The paper considers both the cases of fixed and dynamically changing communication topologies. It is shown that target tracking is achieved for fixed connection topology, if the graph has a directed spanning tree; and for the dynamically changing topology, if the union of the graphs over finite time intervals has a directed spanning tree. The system’s stability is shown using a Lyapunov function-based approach for these cases. All tracking errors are shown to be bounded as long as the target states and its derivatives up to second order are bounded. Detailed numerical simulations further illustrate the controller performance.