Planning and control for Unmanned Air Vehicle formation flight

Abstract

We present a set of algorithmic solutions for a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles evolving along in tight coordination in a constrained environment. The mission to achieve is defined by an ordered sequence of waypoints and a set of constraints to satisfy. The algorithms allow the determination of the geometric configuration of the UAVs, of the trajectories to switch from one configuration to an other, and the flight control of each individual UAV. All the algorithms are embedded within an architecture that ensures a safe and robust behavior of the formation.