Prescribed-Time Distributed Convex Polygon Entrapping Control for Multi-AAVs With Relative Measurements

This article proposes a prescribed-time distributed convex polygon entrapping control protocol based on relative measurements for leader-follower-constructed autonomous aerial vehicles (AAVs). A group of moving targets is considered as the entrapped target, whose dynamics are not predetermined in advance. First, a convex polygon formation is constructed to determine impact points of leaders through optimization, and the followers’ desired positions are derived from the relative positions of their neighbors. Then, a prescribed-time distributed entrapping controller is rigorously deduced, which can be applied to large-scale AAV swarms and guarantee the convergence of the system within a prescribed time set in advance. Finally, numerical simulations are performed for two targets with different dynamics to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, which is capable of realizing the prescribed-time convex polygon entrapping.