Cooperative Target Fencing Control for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Swarm with Collision, Obstacle Avoidance, and Connectivity Maintenance

This paper investigates the target fencing control problem of fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) swarms with collision avoidance and connectivity maintenance in obstacle environments. A distributed cooperative fencing scheme for maneuvering targets is proposed without predefined accurate formation. Firstly, considering that not all states of the target can be obtained by UAVs, a differential state observer is developed to estimate the target’s unknown speed and control input. Secondly, by constructing potential functions with fewer parameter adjustments, corresponding negative gradient terms are calculated to guarantee the flight safety and communication connectivity of the swarm. A distributed cooperative controller is designed using the self-organized theory and consensus control. Additionally, the stability of the closed-loop system with the controller is analyzed based on Lyapunov stability theory. Finally, numerical simulations are performed to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.