Distributed Cooperative Control Path Planning for UAV Formation Based on Ordered Trigger Communication

To address issues such as control instability and imbalance caused by communication constraints, this article proposes a distributed cooperative control method for multi-uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) formations based on communication-ordered triggering. First, to address the limited interactions caused by obstacle occlusion and other factors, a nonoverlapping conflict-staggered communication triggering mechanism is introduced. By incorporating intermittent neighboring communication principles, UAVs maximize information sharing within a limited communication window, effectively resolving issues such as channel conflicts and resource wastage caused by periodic broadcasting in existing communication methods. Next, a gradient-adaptive anti-saturation constraint model is developed to resolve the problems of large control parameter adjustments and slow convergence inherent in traditional anti-saturation methods. In addition, an optimized distributed cooperative orientation control strategy is constructed by integrating position and attitude information, preventing formation instability caused by the reliance on a single observation under interaction constraints. This approach significantly reduces the communication burden while enhancing the stability and adaptability of multi-UAV control. The experimental results show that the proposed communication-ordered triggering multi-UAV formation distributed cooperative control strategy exhibits global asymptotic stability. Compared to the adaptive optimization control method, this approach can maintain effective target tracking and formation stability under communication constraints. Moreover, it provides the UAV swarm with the ability for autonomous target tracking and formation reconfiguration. The communication frequency is significantly reduced compared to the cooperative event-triggered mechanism (CETM) and periodic event-triggered mechanism (PETM) methods, thereby reducing communication bandwidth usage, which aligns with the practical flight requirements of multi-UAV systems.