The purpose of this paper is to design an integrated guidance and control design for a formation flight of four unmanned aerial vehicles to follow a moving ground target.
The guidance law is based on the line‐of‐sight. The control is optimal. The guidance law is integrated with the optimal control law and is applied to a linear dynamic model.
The theoretical results are supported by the numerical simulations that illustrate a coordinated encirclement of a ground maneuvering target.
A linear dynamic UAV model and a liner engine model were employed.
This is expected to provide efficient coordination technique required in many civilian circular formation UAV applications; also the technique can be used to provide a safe environment required for the civil applications.
The research will facilitate the deployment of autonomous unmanned aircraft systems in various civilian applications such as border monitoring.
The research addresses the challenges of coordination of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles in a circular formation using an integrated optimal control technique with line‐of‐sight guidance.
