Bearing Measurements Based Moving Target Localization and Circumnavigation

This paper addressed the localization and circumnavigation problem for a moving target by networked UAVs based on bearing-only measurement. We first introduce an assumption of velocity known to one UAV and a distributed finite-time stable velocity estimator under the assumption. Then we proposed a distributed position estimator which exponentially converges to the moving target's position, under the estimates in the first step. In addition, an associated control law is designed to force the networked UAVs to travel along a common circle of the prescribed radius centered at the target and simultaneously achieve a uniform spacing pattern along the circle. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms is illustrated via simulations.