Multi-UAV Cooperative Formation Flight Control System for cascade Active Disturbance Rejection Control

Abstract

Multi-UAV cooperative formation flight control system, as a typical class of multi-intelligent body system, has been widely used in electric power, fire fighting, military and other fields because of its advantages of high efficiency, fast response and low cost. But often, the UAV working environment is not ideal, and the interference caused by various uncertainties can seriously affect the normal formation flight of the UAV. Current control methods focus more on the research of formation transformation and obstacle avoidance of UAVs, lacking attention to the nonlinear disturbances of UAV speed and position, and lack of research on multi-UAV synchronization under the action of nonlinear perturbations. To overcome this problem, this paper proposes a cascade Active Disturbance Rejection Control (ADRC) method for Multi-UAV cooperative formation flight control system, which achieves online estimation of nonlinear perturbations by expanding the state observer, designs a feedback controller based on the estimated values of perturbations, enhances the UAV resistance to nonlinear time-varying perturbations, and improves the formation efficiency of the UAV and the robustness of the controller. A simulation model of the multi-UAV cooperative formation flight control system is established using MATLAB, and the parameters of the ADRC controller are rectified. The simulation results show that the method proposed in this paper can ensure that the UAVs can maintain the desired formation when subjected to nonlinear time-varying perturbations, and the controller has good robustness, which enhances the ability of the multi-UAV cooperative formation flight control system to resist nonlinear perturbations.