Communication free leader–follower formation control of unmanned aircraft systems

•A contributed communication free formation flight in the leader–follower structure is proposed.•Considering an airborne seeker as the relative measurement sensor, a state space model for the leader–follower system is formulated.•In the presence of the leader maneuvering, an integrated controller–estimator is designed, and the stability is analyzed.•The effectiveness of the proposed control strategy is illustrated via simulation examples.

This paper proposes a formation control strategy for unmanned aircraft under which there is no need to information exchange among aircraft. Based on the measurement of relative information such as distances and orientations obtained from practical sensors, the formation is realized by employing the feedback linearization approach. By considering the leader maneuver to be unknown, a nonlinear estimator is designed and the stability of the combined controller–estimator is guaranteed. Simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed formation flight control strategy.