Abstract
We investigate cooperative target tracking of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with a limited communication range. This is an integration of UAV motion control, target state estimation, and network topology control. We first present the communication topology and basic notations for network connectivity, and introduce the distributed Kalman consensus filter. Then, convergence and boundedness of the estimation errors using the filter are analyzed, and potential functions are proposed for communication link maintenance and collision avoidance. By taking stable target tracking into account, a distributed potential function based UAV motion controller is discussed. Since only the estimation of the target state rather than the state itself is available for UAV motion control and UAV motion can also affect the accuracy of state estimation, it is clear that the UAV motion control and target state estimation are coupled. Finally, the stability and convergence properties of the coupled system under bounded noise are analyzed in detail and demonstrated by simulations.
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Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61773031, 61573042, 61803009, and 61903084) and the Jiangsu Province Science Foundation for Youths, China (No. BK20180358)
Contributors
Rui ZHOU and Bin DI designed the research and processed the data. Bin DI and Yu FENG drafted the manuscript. Rui ZHOU and Jiang ZHAO helped organize the manuscript. Yu FENG, Jiang ZHAO, and Yan HU revised and finalized the paper.
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Rui ZHOU, Yu FENG, Bin DI, Jiang ZHAO, and Yan HU declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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Zhou, R., Feng, Y., Di, B. et al. Multi-UAV cooperative target tracking with bounded noise for connectivity preservation. Front Inform Technol Electron Eng 21, 1494–1503 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1631/FITEE.1900617
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1631/FITEE.1900617
Key words
- Multi-UAV cooperative target tracking
- Network connectivity
- Kalman consensus filter
- Bounded noise
- Connectivity preservation