Model predictive control of cooperative vehicles using systematic search approach

•A MPC approach is proposed to guide a group of cooperative vehicles.•Used objective function consists of sub-costs that account for each mission′s aspect.•Control input is found by a systematic search over a predefined set of controls.•Proposed search computation time is constant and less than traditional optimisation.•Proposed approach efficiency and robustness are studied by Monte Carlo analysis.

This paper describes the guidance law design of a group of autonomous cooperative vehicles using model predictive control. The developed control strategy allows one to find a feasible near optimal control sequence with a short and constant computation delay in all situations. The control strategy takes other vehicles predicted positions into account for cooperation purpose. Numerical simulations are provided where a group of quadrotors must reach several way-points while avoiding obstacles and collisions inside the group. Results obtained using a realistic model of small quadrotors show that the approach could be usable in practice.