Decentralized Cooperative Control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Based on Emergent Mechanism of Starlings

A novel decentralized control approach for unmanned aerial vehicles （UAVs） based on emergent collective behavior identified in starling flocks is proposed in this paper. With the self-organizing principle of starling flocking separation， alignment and cohesion behaviors， a fully distributed leaderless control is designed based on local interaction only. It is augmented by an adaptive switching event-triggered communication protocol， a novelty which greatly reduces the communication load， yet maintains swarming cohesion and formation stability rigorously. Via the Lyapunov stability theory， the formation error can converge to a boundary range， robustness to disturbances and partial communication burden. Ultimately， the numerical simulations are presented to verify the effectiveness of the theoretical results.