Effects of the Steering and Repulsive Potential Interaction on UAV Swarm Formation Equilibrium

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) swarms show great advantages in many applications such as surveillance, reconnaissance, and exploration because of the reduced computational expense, robustness, and less complexity. Artificial potential field (APF) is one such decentralized control strategy that steers UAV through steering and repulsive potential fields to achieve a formation. This paper extends to the previous research of the use of bifurcating APFs for swarm formation control by studying the unaccounted effects of repulsive potentials on the equilibrium states of the swarm system. Two prominent effects are observed, both of which are tied to the parameters of control law and the number of agents in the swarm. The radius of circular formation differs from estimates given by the nonlinear bifurcation analysis of steering potential and lower energy stable formation rings can be achieved with an increase in the number of agents. Finally, detailed simulation results validate the observed effects of the interaction between steering and repulsive potentials.