Dynamic Simulation, Flight Control and Guidance Synthesis for Fixed-Wing UAV Swarms

CARLO E.D. RIBOLDI; MARCO TOMASONI

DOI Number: 10.13009/EUCASS2023-026

Autonomous unmanned flight based on fixed-wing aircraft constitutes a practical and economical solution for transport missions to remote destinations or disadvantaged communities, for which payload and range represent interesting figures of merit. In those scenarios, the employment of UAV swarms appears as a promising way to pursue a scale effect on payload. Considering the military market, the deployment of swarms of smaller aircraft may enable logistic modularity, mitigating the risk of losing the entire mission cargo or war-load by flying over hostile areas. This paper is concerned with several aspects of fixed-wing UAV swarm flight: 6-DOF flight dynamics modeling, aircraft stabilization, path tracking for autonomous guidance, intra-swarm formation control, overall performance assessment and disturbance rejection are topics touched in the work. The methodologies and study-cases herein illustrate the design and coordination of a swarm, obtained through reliable control techniques, and demonstrated within a complete non-linear simulation environment.

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altitude tracking, beam tracking, coordination, drone, fixed-wing uav, Formation Flight, guidance, leader-follower, nonlinear simulation, stability augmentation, swarm, UAV

In Categories: 1. Aerospace Europe Conference 2023, 1.Events, 5. Flight Dynamics/GNC and Avionics

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