Initial Experiments in Cooperative Control of Unmanned Air Vehicles

This paper addresses cooperative control for a team of unmanned air vehicles (UAVs). Specifically, a team of three small UAVs is controlled to perform a cooperative timing mission. Starting at loiter locations distributed around the periphery of a 2 km square battle area, the UAVs cooperatively plan paths to arrive at a target at the center of the battle area in sequence at 10 sec intervals. Cooperative path planning is performed using the methodology of coordination variables and coordination functions. Coordination and waypoint path planning are centralized on a ground station computer. Experiments have been performed using BYU’s fleet of small fixed-wing UAVs, which employ BYU’s autopilot and ground station technology. Experimental results demonstrating cooperative timing are presented.