Cooperative Encirclement and Capture of a Target with Cyber-Attack Capabilities by Multiple UAVs

This paper addresses the challenge of securing a nonlinear Multiple unmanned aerial vehicle (multi-UAV) system against cyber-attacks, specifically with respect to time-varying formation (TVF) enforcement for an unknown input target. The cyber-attack considered is an unknown false data injection and replay attack at the sensor-controller section. To address this problem, a fully distributed adaptive predictive extended state observer (APESO) has been designed. The article introduces an analysis of the Lyapunov-Krasinski generalized functions framework. It provides sufficient conditions for the asymptotic convergence of the error and demonstrates that the proposed formation controller can form the desired time-varying formations while guaranteeing the specified performance. A series of experiments were conducted on a virtual simulation platform to test the proposed control method for multi-UAV formation target rounding. The study confirmed that the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) can successfully track the encircled target even when subjected to cyber-attacks.