Research on parameter optimization of multi-UAV formation flight controller using WLSGWO

Multi-aircraft formation flight control is a priority issue in the operational application of unmanned aircraft vehicles (UAVs). In this study, a novel control strategy using WLSGWO (Grey wolf optimizer with weighted leader search) is proposed based on the nonlinear motion model of multi-UAV formation. Firstly, the formation flight motion models of close formation and sparse formation are introduced, respectively, on which the PID-based formation controller is designed. Moreover, for the premature convergence deficiency of GWO, the WLS strategy is introduced to improve the algorithm’s searching performance. By transforming the formation control problem into a time-cost optimization problem and solving it with the WLSGWO, the results prove the feasibility of the proposed method in solving this problem. In addition, the modifications of the GWO algorithm are also proven to be effective by comparing them with the results obtained by other algorithms.