Formation control with collision avoidance for a multi-UAV system using decentralized MPC and consensus-based control

In this paper, we propose a cooperative formation control strategy with collision-avoidance capability for a multi-unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system by using decentralized model predictive control (MPC) and consensus-based control. Each of the UAVs plans only its own action to track a trajectory. The trajectory is planned for desired formation flying using a consensus-based control algorithm. Collision-avoidance is regarded as coupled constraints. We show how the optimization problems with collision-avoidance can be solved by each UAV in parallel with the other UAVs so that decisions taken independently by each UAV can ensure consistency with the coupled constraints of collision-avoidance. In addition, we show that our proposed approach hardly affects the computation time to solve the optimization problems with collision-avoidance compared to the time for solving the problems without collision-avoidance. Finally, the proposed approach is validated by simulations.