A Novel Guidance Strategy for Target Circumnavigation of Cooperative Multi-UAV Formation

This paper investigates a guidance strategy aiming at target circumnavigation conducted by a fleet of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) circular formation. A novel series of guidance laws, based on error analysis including linear and angular velocities control are proposed, which ensure that all agents maintain constant angular velocity and uniformly distributed along the common circle with given target as its center and the desired radius. For each UAV, the control strategy is on account of via local sensing. The velocity of its neighbor can be obtained by a topology cycle graph for communication. The stability proof of stationary target system is accomplished, including tracking and cooperation performance. Lyapunov Stability Theory is used for proving stability of the non-linear systems. Linear velocity guidance law as input control enables all UAVs positioned at the desired circle and angular velocity guidance law is used for adjusting the distances between each pairs of UAVs. Thus all UAVs distribute with evenly space along the circle. Additionally, simulations of 6DOF model of UAV model are conducted to validate the performances of the proposed guidance method.