Distributed Model Predictive Control Cooperative Guidance Law for Multiple UAVs

Abstract

Aiming at the problem of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) cooperatively intercepting a maneuvering target, this paper proposes a cooperative guidance law with less energy consumption and a newly accurate time-to-go estimation algorithm in the two-dimensional (2D) plane. Firstly, based on the relative motion equations between UAVs and the target on the 2D plane, the line-of-sight (LOS) direction and the LOS normal direction models are established. Then, based on the distributed model predictive control (DMPC) theory, DMPC cooperative guidance laws are designed in two directions. This guidance law can ensure that all UAVs intercept the maneuvering target at the expected LOS angle at the same time and reduce the energy consumption during the guidance process. Then, a new time-to-go estimation algorithm is designed, which can reduce the time-to-go estimation error and improve the cooperative accuracy. Finally, the simulation results show that the DMPC cooperative guidance law reduces energy consumption by more than 50% compared to other guidance laws and the proposed time-to-go estimation algorithm improves the accuracy by 200% compared to traditional methods.

Keywords

• multiple UAVs
• temporal cooperation
• spatial cooperation
• model predictive control
• time-to-go estimation
• maneuvering targets