ACTA AERONAUTICAET ASTRONAUTICA SINICA >
Hierarchical control method for affine formation of fixed-wing UAV swarm
Received date: 2025-06-30
Revised date: 2025-08-11
Accepted date: 2025-09-09
Online published: 2025-09-24
Supported by
National Natural Science Foundation of China(62303483)
Affine formation control can generate and transform the overall formation by only using the configurations of a few key nodes, featuring high flexibility and good scalability. For the affine formation control problem of fixed-wing UAV swarms, an affine formation hierarchical control scheme is designed, incorporating leader cooperative path following, follower tracking, and collision avoidance. This scheme divides the swarm into a leader layer and a follower layer: multiple leaders cooperatively generate the reference configuration required for the swarm formation while following the preset path, followers only need to track the desired positions in the affine formation spanned by the leader positions. Meanwhile, collision avoidance control ensures that each UAV avoids environmental obstacles and prevents inter-UAV collisions. Compared with existing algorithms, this method achieves a higher obstacle avoidance success rate, guarantees inter-UAV safety, and enables faster convergence of follower tracking error. Furthermore, a software-in-the-loop simulation of six UAVs is completed on the XTDrone platform built based on ROS and Gazebo. In the simulation, UAVs can form the desired affine formation and fly safely without collisions throughout the process. The relevant codes have been-released as open source.
Ying AO , Hao CHEN , Huiming LI , Kun XIAO , Xiangke WANG . Hierarchical control method for affine formation of fixed-wing UAV swarm[J]. ACTA AERONAUTICAET ASTRONAUTICA SINICA, 2026 , 47(9) : 532494 -532494 . DOI: 10.7527/S1000-6893.2025.32494
| [1] | 武晓龙, 王茜, 焦晓静. 美国小型无人机集群发展分析[J]. 飞航导弹, 2018(2): 31-37. |
| WU X L, WANG Q, JIAO X J. Analysis on the development of small UAV cluster in the United States[J]. Aerodynamic Missile Journal, 2018(2): 31-37 (in Chinese). | |
| [2] | ZHAO W, YU W W, ZHANG H P. Observer-based formation tracking control for leader-follower multi-agent systems[J]. IET Control Theory Applications, 2019, 13(2): 239-247. |
| [3] | BALCH T, ARKIN R C. Behavior-based formation control for multirobot teams[J]. IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, 1998, 14(6): 926-939. |
| [4] | LEWIS M A, TAN K H. High precision formation control of mobile robots using virtual structures[J]. Autonomous Robots, 1997, 4(4): 387-403. |
| [5] | LI Y, CHAI L N, WU C. Multi-robot formation obstacle avoidance based on virtual robots and improved artificial potential fields[C]∥2024 China Automation Congress (CAC). Piscataway: IEEE Press, 2025: 1861-1866. |
| [6] | JAMSHIDI M, GOMEZ J, JAIMES A S. Intelligent control of UAVs for consensus-based and network controlled applications[J]. Applied Computational Mathematics, 2011, 10(1): 35-64. |
| [7] | ZHAO S Y. Affine formation maneuver control of multiagent systems[J]. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 2018, 63(12): 4140-4155. |
| [8] | LIN Z Y, WANG L L, CHEN Z Y, et al. Necessary and sufficient graphical conditions for affine formation control[J]. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 2016, 61(10): 2877-2891. |
| [9] | XU Y, ZHAO S Y, LUO D L, et al. Affine formation maneuver control of high-order multi-agent systems over directed networks[J]. Automatica, 2020, 118: 109004. |
| [10] | WANG J N, DING X J, WANG C Y, et al. Affine formation control of general linear multi-agent systems with delays[J]. Unmanned Systems, 2023, 11(2): 123-132. |
| [11] | 陈浩. 复杂条件下固定翼无人机集群编队控制研究[D]. 长沙: 国防科技大学, 2020: 79-88. |
| CHEN H. Research on formation control of fixed-wing UAV swarms in complex enivronments[D]. Changsha: National University of Defense Technology, 2020: 79-88 (in Chinese). | |
| [12] | 王祥科, 刘志宏, 丛一睿, 等. 小型固定翼无人机集群综述和未来发展[J]. 航空学报, 2020, 41(4): 023732. |
| WANG X K, LIU Z H, CONG Y R, et al. Miniature fixed-wing UAV swarms: Review and outlook[J]. Acta Aeronautica et Astronautica Sinica, 2020, 41(4): 023732 (in Chinese). | |
| [13] | CHEN L M, MEI J, LI C J, et al. Distributed leader-follower affine formation maneuver control for high-order multiagent systems[J]. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 2020, 65(11): 4941-4948. |
| [14] | SU P Y, SHI Z X, YU J L, et al. Distributed time-varying optimization-based protocols for affine formation maneuver[J]. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, 2025, 72(8): 8503-8511. |
| [15] | XU Y, ZHENG W M, LUO D L, et al. Dynamic affine formation control of networked under-actuated quad-rotor UAVs with three-dimensional patterns[J]. Journal of Systems Engineering and Electronics, 2022, 33(6): 1269-1285. |
| [16] | 李慧铭. 领航跟随模式固定翼无人机集群仿射编队控制[D]. 长沙: 国防科技大学, 2020: 29-64. |
| LI H M. Affine formation control of multiple fixed-wing UAV swarms based on leader-follower method[D]. Changsha: National University of Defense Technology, 2020: 29-64 (in Chinese). | |
| [17] | BEARD R W, MCLAIN T W. Small unmanned aircraft[M]. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012: 22-30. |
| [18] | SUJIT P B, SARIPALLI S, SOUSA J B. Unmanned aerial vehicle path following: A survey and analysis of algorithms for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicless[J]. IEEE Control Systems Magazine, 2014, 34(1): 42-59. |
| [19] | BEARD R W, FERRIN J, HUMPHERYS J. Fixed wing UAV path following in wind with input constraints[J]. IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, 2014, 22(6): 2103-2117. |
| [20] | WANG Y Z, SHAN M, WANG D W. Motion capability analysis for multiple fixed-wing UAV formations with speed and heading rate constraints[J]. IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems, 2020, 7(2): 977-989. |
| [21] | CHEN H, CONG Y R, WANG X K, et al. Coordinated path-following control of fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles[J]. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems, 2022, 52(4): 2540-2554. |
| [22] | ZHAO S L, WANG X K, LIN Z Y, et al. Integrating vector field approach and input-to-state stability curved path following for unmanned aerial vehicles[J]. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems, 2020, 50(8): 2897-2904. |
| [23] | HE X D, LI Z K, WANG X K, et al. Roto-translation invariant formation of fixed-wing UAVs in 3D: Feasibility and control[J]. Automatica, 2024, 161: 111492. |
| [24] | FIORINI P, SHILLER Z. Motion planning in dynamic environments using velocity obstacles[J]. The International Journal of Robotics Research, 1998, 17(7): 760-772. |
| [25] | 王亚静. 复杂环境下固定翼无人机集群分布式规避控制研究[D]. 长沙: 国防科技大学, 2018: 31-36. |
| WANG Y J. Distributed collision avoidance control for fixed-wing UAV swarms in cluttered environment[D]. Changsha: National University of Defense Technology, 2018: 31-36 (in Chinese). | |
| [26] | XTDrone[CP/OL][2025-06-30]. . |
| [27] | LIU Y F, LIU J J, HE Z P, et al. A survey of multi-agent systems on distributed formation control[J]. Unmanned Systems, 2024, 12(5): 913-926. |
/
| 〈 |
|
〉 |