Derivation of Formation-Flight Guidance Laws for Unmanned Air Vehicles

Abstract

A guidance-based approach to formation flight of unmanned air vehicles is presented. Most of the works related to formation flight deal with the control of the relative positions between the vehicles in the formation. In the proposed approach a pursuit law replaces the control law. A new rule of pursuit denoted as detective deviated pursuit is then developed based on known guidance rules. The proposed guidance law regulates the distances between vehicles and the heading angles with respect to the lines of sight. We show that the detective deviated pursuit rule can be applied to formation flight, where the formation geometry determines the guidance-law parameters. The work discusses the conditions for a stable formation flight in the case of a maneuvering leader and proposes a control scheme for implementation. The performance of the new guidance-based formation flight is evaluated via simulations. Nomenclature C D = drag coefficient CL = lift coefficient D = drag g = acceleration caused by gravity K = drag polar constant K xI = integral controller for the x state K xP = proportional controller for the x state n = load factor R = radius r = leader‐follower range T = thrust t = time V =v elocity W = weight X = states vector x, y = inertial coordinates