Sun Yili

3D scene simulation of UAVs formation flight based on FlightGear simulator

To solve the problem of scene simulation for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) formation flight, a method based on FlightGear is proposed. The 3D scene simulation system scheme is designed. The formation flight control system of leader-followers is established by the Matlab/Simulink, where the flight state data of UAVs is output to the FlightGear simulator by the interface of Matlab. A 3D model of UAV is designed based on AC3D software. A friendly man-machine interface is designed, which combines the simulation data with 3D animations, to make the simulation results more exhaustive. Finally, the UAVs formation flight scene simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Constraints for unmanned aerial vehicles formation flight path

The constraints for flight paths of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) formation in form of leader-follower are investigated in this paper. First, in order to keep the formations spatial pattern stable, a minimum turning radius for leader is derived from the limitation of UAVs velocity. Second, a formation turning controller in follower is designed, which consists of followers turning angular rate control loop to track the leaders turning angular rate and velocity control loop to keep the certain distance to the leader. Finally, the simulations are implemented on the control system to verify the effect of the path constraints.