UAV tight formation flight modeling and autopilot designing

To solve the problem of UAV formation flight, this paper presents an approach of modeling tight formation flight of unmanned aerial vehicle, and a formation hold autopilot design. In close formation, the aerodynamic forces and moments of the wing UAV are greatly changed, because of the effect of vortex of the adjacent lead UAV. Full state feedback is selected, and aerodynamic interference is modeled as feedback nonlinearities. A new wake robust formation hold autopilot is designed, which can keep the optimal configuration of formation.