Stability of cooperative unmanned aerial vehicles based on relative measurements

This paper describes a guidance method which is applicable in the leader–follower formation control. By considering limitations on communication among the aircraft, using airborne seekers for relative states measurement is proposed, and accordingly a kinematic model for the leader–follower system is developed. A main contribution of this work is analysis of the formation keeping in various flight scenarios when a cascade loop-based guidance strategy is used. In the proposed control structure, to regulate the relative ranges and the relative angles toward the desired values, two separate control channels are designed and to overcome the leader maneuvers, two proper acceleration estimators are employed. The effectiveness of the proposed guidance strategy is evaluated via simulation examples.