Decentralized overlapping control of a formation of unmanned aerial vehicles

Decentralized overlapping feedback laws are designed for a formation of unmanned aerial vehicles. The dynamic model of the formation with an overlapping information structure constraint is treated as an interconnected system with overlapping subsystems. Using the mathematical framework of the inclusion principle, the interconnected system is expanded into a higher dimensional space in which the subsystems appear to be disjoint. On a subsystem level, a static state feedback controller is designed to robustly stabilize the perturbed nominal dynamics of the subsystem. The design procedure is based on the hierarchical application of convex optimization tools involving linear matrix inequalities. As a final step, the decentralized controllers are contracted back to the original interconnected system for implementation.