Three-dimensional containment control for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles

In this paper, the three-dimensional containment control problems of multiple unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems are solved for both stationary and dynamic master UAV cases. For the stationary case, a distributed linear containment control protocol is constructed only using relative state information, where the gain matrix can be determined by solving the modified algebraic Riccati inequality. Then, for the dynamic case, a sampled-data based protocol is induced by choosing the sampling period and gain parameter properly. Using tools from Lyapunov stability and algebraic graph theories, the proposed control protocols guarantee that the states of the slave UAVs will ultimately converge into the convex hull spanned by the master UAVs in the three-dimensional space. Finally, two numerical simulations are carried out to validate the effectiveness of theoretical results.