Adaptive Dynamic Programming-Based Optimal Circumnavigation Control of Multi-UAV Systems via Orthogonal Vector...

Area of Science:

• Robotics and Control Systems
• Aerospace Engineering
• Distributed Systems

Background:

• Cooperative navigation for multi-uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) systems is crucial for complex missions.
• Existing methods struggle with composite disturbances in 3-D space.
• Optimal circumnavigation requires robust and adaptive control strategies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a distributed optimal cooperative circumnavigation control framework for multi-UAV systems.
• To address challenges posed by composite disturbances in 3-D environments.
• To ensure stability and minimize cost functions in cooperative UAV missions.

Main Methods:

• A hierarchical kinematic-dynamic control framework is proposed.
• A geometric vector-based kinematic formulation simplifies the circumnavigation task.
• A hybrid control strategy integrates feedforward backstepping with adaptive dynamic programming (ADP).

Main Results:

• The kinematic level transforms circumnavigation into a relative velocity tracking problem.
• The dynamic level uses backstepping for disturbance compensation and ADP for online performance index approximation.
• Lyapunov stability analysis confirms uniform boundedness of all closed-loop signals.

Conclusions:

• The proposed control strategy ensures stability and minimizes the predefined cost function for cooperative circumnavigation.
• The method demonstrates superior performance compared to conventional approaches in simulations.
• This framework offers a feasible and effective solution for advanced multi-UAV operations.