Management of Communication Failures in Formation Flight

This paper addresses the problem of the management of unmanned air vehicles flying in formation, in the presence of failures in the communication system or aircraft loss. The problem is solved representing the formation as an oriented graph, and a procedure based on shortest path theory provides the optimal solution for the information flow within the formation. When a failure occurs, the procedure runs again providing a sub-optimal solution, and formation geometry is changed according to pre-set reconfiguration maps. Formal definitions, such as the novel definition of Virtual Leader, and simulation results validate the methodology.