Dynamic Evaluation Strategies for Multiple Aircrafts Formation Using Collision and Matching Probabilities

Abstract

Configuration evaluation is a key technology to be considered in the design of multiple aircrafts formation (MAF) configurations with high dynamic properties in engineering applications. This paper deduces the relationship between relative velocity, dynamic safety distance and dynamic adjacent distance of formation members, then divides the formation states into collision-state and matching-state. Meanwhile, probability models are constructed based on the binary normal distribution of relative distance and relative velocity. Moreover, configuration evaluation strategies are studied by quantitatively analyzing the denseness and the basic capabilities according to the MAF collision-state probability and the MAF matching-state probability, respectively. The scale of MAF is grouped into 5 levels, and previous lattice-type structures are extended into four degrees by taking the relative velocities into account to instruct the configuration design under complex task conditions. Finally, hardware-in-loop (HIL) simulation and outfield flight test results are presented to verify the feasibility of these evaluation strategies.