Flight-Formation Control of Air Vehicles Based on Collective Motion Control of Organisms

Collective motion control in nature such as bird flock or fish school shows conspicuous stability and flexibility in the motion of a large quantity of individuals, thus providing a feasible model of a flight-formation control of air vehicles. The application of such biologically-inspired collective motion control to UAV is proposed here to upgrade its performance and reliability by combining different functions of multiple UAVs and by utilizing high degree of redundancy. The simple rule-based model based on a fish school realizes a feasible method of loitering or group shape control, thus showing a promising application to the flight-formation control of air vehicles or other artificial collective systems.