Bearing-Based Formation Control of Multi-UAV Systems with Conditional Wind Disturbance Utilization

This paper investigates bearing-based formation control of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) flying in low-altitude wind fields. In such environments, time-varying wind disturbances can distort the formation geometry, enlarge bearing errors, and even induce potential collisions among neighboring UAVs, yet they also contain components that can be beneficial for the formation motion. Conventional disturbance compensation methods treat wind as a purely harmful factor and aim to reject it completely, which may sacrifice responsiveness and energy efficiency. To address this issue, we propose a pure bearing-based formation control framework with Conditional Disturbance Utilization (CDU). First, a real-time disturbance observer is designed to estimate the wind-induced disturbances in both translational and rotational channels. Then, based on the estimated disturbances and the bearing-dependent potential function, CDU indicators are constructed to judge whether the current disturbance component is beneficial or detrimental with respect to the formation control objective. These indicators are embedded into the bearing-based formation controller so that favorable wind components are exploited to accelerate formation convergence, whereas adverse components are compensated. Using an angle-rigid formation topology and a Lyapunov-based analysis, we prove that the proposed CDU-based controller guarantees global asymptotic stability of the desired formation. Simulation results on triangular and hexagonal formations under complex wind disturbances show that the proposed method achieves faster convergence and improved responsiveness compared with traditional disturbance observer-based control, while preserving formation stability and safety.