Time-Coordinated Control for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Swarm Cooperative Attack on Ground-Moving Target

Abstract

In this paper, cooperative attack control law analysis and design problems for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm attack on ground-moving target with time-coordinated strategies are investigated. First, the time-coordinated control problem for a single UAV is formulated, which is the foundation of solving the problem of a single UAV arriving at the desired attack position relative to ground-moving target at a specific terminal time. Then, relative motion between each UAV and ground-moving target is considered as a finite-time time-varying tracking system problem, and the difference between expected output and system output is defined as tracking error vector. The control law is obtained by linear quadratic optimal control theory to minimize the energy cost in the whole process and the tracking error at the terminal time. Besides, time-coordinated function, which is critical to coordinate terminal time among all UAVs in the UAV swarm, is proposed to model time-coordinated strategies. Finally, numerical simulations show that the proposed control law can steer UAV swarm to arrive at the desired attack positions and achieve the time-coordinated strategies effectively.