@article{HARTLEY2022117665,
title = {Formation control for UAVs using a Flux Guided approach},
journal = {Expert Systems with Applications},
pages = {117665},
year = {2022},
issn = {0957-4174},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2022.117665},
url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0957417422009666},
author = {John Hartley and Hubert P.H. Shum and Edmond S.L. Ho and He Wang and Subramanian Ramamoorthy},
keywords = {Unmanned aerial vehicles, Multi-agent motion planning, Formation encirclement, Artificial harmonic field, Electric flux},
abstract = {Existing studies on formation control for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) have not considered encircling targets where an optimum coverage of the target is required at all times. Such coverage plays a critical role in many real-world applications such as tracking hostile UAVs. This paper proposes a new path planning approach called the Flux Guided (FG) method, which generates collision-free trajectories for multiple UAVs while maximising the coverage of target(s). Our method enables UAVs to track directly toward a target whilst maintaining maximum coverage. Furthermore, multiple scattered targets can be tracked by scaling the formation during flight. FG is highly scalable since it only requires communication between sub-set of UAVs on the open boundary of the formation’s surface. Experimental results further validate that FG generates UAV trajectories 1.5× shorter than previous work and that trajectory planning for 9 leader/follower UAVs to surround a target in two different scenarios only requires 0.52 s and 0.88 s, respectively. The resulting trajectories are suitable for robotic controls after time-optimal parameterisation; we demonstrate this using a 3d dynamic particle system that tracks the desired trajectories using a PID controller.}
}