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Cooperative Target-capturing with Incomplete Target Information

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Abstract

This paper presents a distributed target-centric formation control strategy for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the presence of target motion uncertainty. The formation is maintained around a target using a combination of a consensus protocol and a sliding mode control law. Consensus helps in distributing the target information which is available only to a subset of vehicles. Sliding mode control compensates for the uncertainty in the target information. Hence, collectively the combined strategy enforces each of the vehicles to maintain its respective position in the formation. We show that if at least one vehicle in a group has target information with some uncertainty and the corresponding communication graph is connected, then a target-centric formation can be maintained. The performance of the proposed strategy is illustrated through simulations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing, Engineering and Information Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 8ST, UK

    Mangal Kothari

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, US Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, CO, USA

    Rajnikant Sharma

  3. Northumbria University, Ellison Building, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 8ST, UK

    Ian Postlethwaite

  4. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA

    Randal W. Beard

  5. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA

    Daniel Pack

Authors
  1. Mangal Kothari
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  2. Rajnikant Sharma
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  3. Ian Postlethwaite
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  4. Randal W. Beard
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  5. Daniel Pack
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Correspondence to Rajnikant Sharma.

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Kothari, M., Sharma, R., Postlethwaite, I. et al. Cooperative Target-capturing with Incomplete Target Information. J Intell Robot Syst 72, 373–384 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-012-9808-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-012-9808-0

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