Distributed synchronization control for multiple tailless flying‐wing UAVs with predefined tracking accuracy and input nonlinearities

Abstract

SummaryThis article addresses the distributed adaptive synchronization tracking control problem for multiple flying‐wing UAVs with predefined accuracy and unknown input nonlinearities. Considering that the multiple flying‐wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) system is a large‐scale nonlinear and strongly coupled system, the control schemes in existing literature which only consider longitudinal, lateral or attitude control may not be applicable in practical engineering. Thus, a full‐state flying‐wing UAV model containing both translational and rotational motions is established, whose dynamics are six‐degree‐of‐freedom with twelve‐state‐variables. Furthermore, to handle the problem that the prior knowledge of the actuator nonlinearities of multi‐UAV system are difficult to obtain, a more general input nonlinear model is established and the adaptive boundary estimation technique is developed. Finally, a performance‐oriented controller is proposed by incorporating a series of smooth functions into adaptive neural control design and Lyapunov analysis. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the presented control scheme can guarantee the satisfactory transient tracking error performance, and the tracking error converges to a user‐defined interval ultimately.