Standoff Tracking of Multi-UAVs Simultaneous Arriving

For standoff tracking problem with multi-UAVs simultaneous arriving, a new Lyapunov vector field and the cooperative velocity controller based on tau-coupling theory are proposed. Compare with other LVF, a settable parameter added to the ratio Lyapunov vector field (RLVF) in this paper makes it possible to balance the convergence speed and angular rate limitation in the tracking process. The conclusion that smaller parameter produce faster convergence speed but larger turning rate is obtained. An approximate formula is derived to give the range of the parameter with a given rate limit. To ensure that the UAVs could track the target simultaneously from different initial position which are rarely taken into account by other researchers, the cooperative velocity controller based on tau-coupling theory is utilized and complicated calculations on speed and remaining path is not required. Numerical simulation examples are provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control approach.