Distributed Event-Triggered-Based Adaptive Formation Tracking Control for Multi-UAV Systems Under Fixed and Switched Topologies

This paper investigates the time-varying formation-tracking (TVFT) problem for multi-UAV systems (MUSs), where the followers need to achieve a predefined time-varying formation configuration while tracking the leader’s state. In order to reduce the consumption of communication resources, an adaptive event-triggered mechanism (AETM) is designed. By combining the advantages of the adaptive technique and the event-triggered mechanism (ETM), UAVs can realize intermittent communication without relying on global information. Secondly, to improve the flexibility of formation-tracking trajectories, the TVFT consensus protocol with non-zero leader inputs is constructed. Meanwhile, the scope of the formation-tracking feasibility condition is extended. Then, the stability of the system is verified by Lyapunov stability theory, and sufficient conditions for MUSs to realize the desired TVFT configuration are obtained. In addition, the designed consensus protocol can be applied to both fixed topologies and switching topologies. Finally, the validity of the designed algorithm is confirmed by numerical examples and software-in-the-loop (SIL) simulation experiments.