Time-Varying Formation Tracking Control for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Theories and Applications

Time-varying formation tracking (TVFT) problems for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) swarm systems with the leader's unknown input are studied. The follower UAVs form an expected formation while tracking the leader UAV. According to the information of the neighboring UAVs, a TVFT control protocol is constructed. It's proved by Lyapunov stability theory that the error of each follower UAV converge to a specified boundary, which means that the swarm system of UAVs can realize the practical TVFT. A platform consisting of five Tello quadrotors and ultrawideband (UWB) positioning technology is given. The effectiveness of the TVFT control protocol is verified on numerical simulation and Tello-UWB experiment platform.