导航

ACTA AERONAUTICAET ASTRONAUTICA SINICA ›› 2018, Vol. 39 ›› Issue (2): 321497-321497.doi: 10.7527/S1000-6893.2017.21497

• Electronics and Electrical Engineering and Control • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Guidance law for cooperative tracking of a ground target based on leader-follower formation of UAVs

ZHANG Min, XIA Weizheng, HUANG Kun, CHEN Xin   

  1. College of Automation Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China
  • Received:2017-06-09 Revised:2017-09-28 Online:2018-02-15 Published:2017-10-10
  • Supported by:
    Aeronautical Science Foundation of China (20160152001)

Abstract: Ground target tracking is one of the important issues for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in the mission application stage. Multi-UAV cooperative tracking can reduce the probability of losing the target and improve the estimation accuracy. This paper presents a method of guidance law for cooperative tracking based on leader-follower formation of UAVs, which solves the problem of speed range limitation of traditional standoff tracking method. By controlling the heading of the leader UAV in approaching the tangential direction of the tracking circle, a new guidance law for the leader UAV is designed, and the close-loop system stability of the law is proved. By controlling the speed and heading of the follower UAV in approaching the speed and heading of the leader UAV, new guidance laws for tracking of the leader UAV and controlling of the inter-UAV angle of the formation are designed for the follower UAVs, and the stability of the laws are also proved using two Lyapunov functions. Simulation results of tracking the static target, the constant speed target and the variable speed target show that the proposed guidance method can achieve the cooperative tracking of the ground targets with different motions, and the tracking performance is better than the classic Lyapunov vector method under the same simulation conditions.

Key words: Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), formation, cooperative tracking, ground target, Lyapunov stability

CLC Number: