Control of leader-follower formations of terrestrial UAVs

In this paper, we present a method for designing a decentralized control architecture, distributed among autonomous agents, to achieve a leader/follower formation of terrestrial UAVs. Each control unit employs only local sensor information to acquire data on the relative position and velocity so as to reduce sensitivity with respect to the information flow among agents. Each controller is designed on the basis of a dynamic model of the relative motion between followers and a designated leader. The use of the internal model paradigm as a design philosophy allows to handle uncertainties on the leader reference trajectory and parameter uncertainties on the plant model in a similar fashion. The controller provides convergence of the formation to a desired configuration, while avoiding collisions between neighboring vehicles by confining them into specified "sectors" during transients.