Pigeon-inspired Formation Control for Multi-UAVs under Obstacle Environments

In the real world, neighboring individuals with communication links determine the state and the weight of different individuals in the group. There are closer relations between the status of neighboring individuals in a collective system. To imitate this situation, a strategic model of collective system coordination and control was proposed by imitating the decision- making mechanism of pigeon flocks. Each individual changes its situation based on the weighting and distance to the neighboring individuals in the collective system. This paper mainly studies the problem of formation control inspired by the decision-making mechanism of pigeon flocks under obstacle environments. By designing the control law of fixed relative position and speed consistency and integrating it with the decision-making mechanism of pigeon flocks, formation control of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm is realized. A judging mechanism is proposed to determine whether it is necessary for UAVs to avoid obstacles. The simulation results show that the UAVs can generate, maintain and reconstruct the desired formation in a real-time manner under consideration of avoiding obstacles.