Cooperative Control with Higher Order Consensus for Geometric Configuration of Multiple UAVs Flying in Formation

In this paper, a distributed control protocol for multi-UAV systems is proposed. Here, an UAV is considered as a double-integrator system. In the case of single-integrator type systems, control protocol is usually, straightforward and the protocol gets complicated when the order is increased. It would be interesting if the control protocol for single-integrator type systems could have been extended to double integrator type systems, and in this work, an effort is made for that extension. It is observed that for a double-integrator system, two gains are to be tuned, whereas, a single gain tuning is sufficient for single-integrator systems. But, fortunately, it is found out that two gains are related to each other, and the proof is provided to show that deciding one gain is enough to lead consensus error convergence to zero asymptotically. In this work, the goal of the formation is to allow the multi-UAV system to change it’s geometrical configuration in flying. Finally, to show the effectiveness of the proposed control protocol, the control law is implemented and simulated in the MATLAB environment.