Predefined Time and Prespecified Precision for Bearing-Constrained AAV Swarm

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Control Systems
• Aerospace Engineering

Background:

• Traditional distance-based formation control for autonomous aerial vehicles (AAVs) requires complex distance measurements and individual command updates.
• Existing bearing-based methods often lack precise control over convergence time and precision.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a simplified, robust bearing-based formation control method for AAV swarms.
• To enable users to pre-specify both convergence time and precision for swarm formations.
• To reduce hardware and sensing requirements compared to distance-based approaches.

Main Methods:

• Utilizes bearing information instead of direct distance measurements for simplified constraints.
• Employs a continuous hyperbolic tangent saturation function and an input saturation compensation system.
• Formation reconfiguration is achieved by adjusting leader trajectories, eliminating individual AAV command updates.

Main Results:

• Demonstrates enhanced robustness against real-world input constraints.
• Ensures system convergence and precision while mitigating singularity issues.
• Successfully validates the approach with a 6-degree-of-freedom (6DoF) quadrotor AAV swarm.

Conclusions:

• The proposed bearing-based control method offers a practical and effective solution for AAV swarm formation.
• It provides superior flexibility by allowing preset control over convergence time and precision.
• The approach reduces system complexity and enhances robustness for real-world applications.