An Improved Event-Triggered Communication Mechanism with State Prediction for Multiple UAVs Formation Control

To address the distributed formation control problem for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), this paper proposes a formation control algorithm based on improved dynamic event-triggered communication mechanism with state prediction (DECM-SP). In the proposed DECM-SP based formation control algorithm, to make the formation of UAVs more accurate and stable, a state prediction algorithm is developed to predict the state information of neighbor UAVs, where the predicted state information is applied to flight control of UAV. Then, an improved dynamic event-triggered communication mechanism is designed to manage communication among UAVs to reduce state information transmissions, thereby improving the utilization efficiency of communication resources. Finally, a consensus-based formation protocol is presented to achieve and maintain the expected formation. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed algorithm can not only form and maintain the desired formation with higher accuracy and more robust stability but also further reduce the state information exchanges to improve the utilization efficiency of communication resources.