Formation Flight and Collision Avoidance for Multiple UAVs using Concept of Elastic Weighting Factor

Abstract

In this thesis, the guidance law for formation flight and collision avoidance of multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAVs) is proposed. To construct the physically comprehensible guidance law for formation flight, virtual structure approach is used. To develop guidance law for collision avoidance for both other UAVs and unknown static obstacles, geometric approach using geometric information such as relative vector is utilized. Through Lyapunov theorem, the stability of the proposed guidance law is proved. To combine guidance commands, the concept of elastic weighting factor inspired by the elastic behavior of shape memory polymer, which tends to regain its original shape after deformation, is introduced. By using the concept of elastic weighting factor, multiple UAVs are able to cope actively with situation of collision between both UAVs and static obstacles during the formation flight. To verify the performance of proposed method, numerical simulations are performed for various scenarios during formation flight.