A Geometric Control Strategy for Real-time Coordination of Multiple Unmanned Aircraft Systems

Abstract

In recent years, the application of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) has incremented due to their cost-effectiveness ratio, portability and reduced size. This allows their utilization in multiple operations in complex military and civilian applications. UAS operations sometimes require the usage of human pilots to manage the different situations that can be present at any moment of a mission, and to decide the better option for every UAS involved. The simplest way to realize these tasks is to gather multiple pilots, one for each UAS. However, this option carries the complexity of coordinating the actions of every pilot involved in the mission. This might require several hours of specialized training, delays, and higher costs. To mitigate these nuances, this paper proposes a geometric control method to stabilize multiple UAS in formation. Our method allows a group of UAS to accomplish tasks using a determined formation. Two experiments are presented that demonstrates the performance of the technique. In the first experiment, one UAS is configured as a leader, while a second UAS is configured as a follower. The second experiment considers a scenario where the leader UAS is replaced by a physical device that can be used by a non-trained human pilot to directly affect the behavior of the follower UAS.