Pigeon-Inspired UAV Swarm Control and Planning Within a Virtual Tube

To guide the movement of a UAV swarm in an obstacle-dense environment, a curved regular virtual tube based on pigeon-inspired optimization (PIO) is planned in this paper. There is no obstacle within the virtual tube, which serves as a safe corridor for UAVs. Then, a distributed swarm controller based on a pigeon flocking hierarchical model is proposed, enabling all UAVs to pass through a virtual tube, guaranteeing safety between UAVs and keeping within the virtual tube. Numerical simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed virtual tube planning and UAV swarm passing-through methods.