THE DECENTRALIZED NONLINEAR MODEL PREDICTIVE FORMATION FLIGHT

This paper presents a model-predictive formation flight control technique with obstacle avoidance. The control performance and the computation time reduction of the decentralized methods are evaluated in comparison with the centralized methods in the standard leader-follower structure using nonlinear model predictive control(NMPC) formulation. Furthermore, the control input saturation and state constraints are considered as inequality constraints using Kuhn-Tucker condition in the NMPC framework, and the collision avoidance can be incorporated in real time. The numerical simulation results support the feasibility of the proposed method in terms of formation maintenance and obstacle avoidance.