关键词: 无人机编队控制, 路径规划, 虚拟结构法, 人工势场法

Abstract: The traditional distributed formation control method of Virtual Structure exhibited limited flexibility in transformation, was unable to avoid obstacles in time. To solve this problem, a Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) formation control algorithm based on virtual control network was proposed. For global path planning, the individual drones in the formation maintained fixed positions and flew in a diamond formation as a whole, following the virtual center point. In the local path planning, the Artificial Potential Field method was used to avoid known obstacles. For unknown static obstacles in the environment, the gravity of the anchor point and the target point were add to improve the Artificial Potential Field method, so that the UAV flew around the unknown obstacle and returned to the original path after successfully avoiding obstacle. Simulation results show that the Improved Artificial Potential Field method has shorter length compared to the A* algorithm, Rapidly-exploring Random Tree algorithm (RRT), and Dynamic Window Approach (DWA) in the path planning. In terms of runtime, it saves 81.27% compared to Rapidly-exploring Random Tree Star (RRT*), 48.3% and 46.97% compared to DWA and RRT*, which proves the effectiveness of the Improved Artificial Potential Field method.

Key words: Unmanned Aerial Vehicle &#40, UAV&#41, formation control, path planning