Formation control method based on artificial potential fields for aircraft flight simulation

SIMULATION ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 003754972110633
Author(s):  
Andre N Costa ◽  
Felipe LL Medeiros ◽  
Joao PA Dantas ◽  
Diego Geraldo ◽  
Nei Y Soma

As simulation becomes more present in the military context for variate purposes, the need for accurate behaviors is of paramount importance. In the air domain, a noteworthy behavior relates to how a group of aircraft moves in a coordinated way. This can be defined as formation flying, which, combined with a move-to-goal behavior, is the focus of this work. The objective of the formation control problem considered is to ensure that simulated aircraft fly autonomously, seeking a formation, while moving toward a goal waypoint. For that, we propose the use of artificial potential fields, which reduce the complexities that implementing a complete cognition model could pose. These fields define forces that control the movement of the entities into formation and to the prescribed waypoint. Our formation control approach is parameterizable, allowing modifications that translate how the aircraft prioritize its sub-behaviors. Instead of defining this prioritization on an empirical basis, we elaborate metrics to evaluate the chosen parameters. From these metrics, we use an optimization methodology to find the best parameter values for a set of scenarios. Thus, our main contribution is bringing together artificial potential fields and simulation optimization to achieve more robust results for simulated military aircraft to fly in formation. We use a large set of scenarios for the optimization process, which evaluates its objective function through the simulations. The results show that the use of the proposed approach may generate gains of up to 27% if compared to arbitrarily selected parameters, with respect to one of the metrics adopted. In addition, we were able to observe that, for the scenarios considered, the presence of a formation leader was an obstacle to achieving the best results, demonstrating that our approach may lead to conclusions with direct operational impacts.

2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mingyu Fu ◽  
Jianfang Jiao

This paper investigates the coordination control of multiple marine vessels in different operational modes. Based on hybrid control theory, a novel coordinated formation control approach is proposed. The proposed method comprises several continuous state controllers and discrete event logics. Continuous controllers for coordinated formation, coordinated dynamic positioning and coordinated path following are designed, and an appropriate weighting function is given to switch between these controllers according to initiated commands. In order to ensure the security of coordination operations of vessels in arbitrary initial locations, the supervisory switching control method is employed in the integrated coordination control system where all the controllers are governed by a supervisor. The effectiveness of the proposed coordinated formation control approach is finally illustrated by simulations.


Author(s):  
Meijiao Zhao ◽  
Yan Peng ◽  
Yueying Wang ◽  
Dan Zhang ◽  
Jun Luo ◽  
...  

In this paper, a concise leader-follower formation control approach is presented for a group of underactuated unmanned surface vehicle with dynamic system uncertainties and external environment disturbances, where the output errors are required to be within constraints. To settle the output error constraints, a standard barrier Lyapunov function (BLF) is incorporated into the backstepping control method. Furthermore, the “differential explosion” problem of virtual control laws is avoided by introducing the dynamic surface control. To estimate the unknown dynamic terms, an adaptive neural network is designed and a nonlinear disturbance observer is adopted to compensate for the approximation errors of neural network and ocean environment disturbances. Under the constraint of output error, the presented controller based on standard BLF has simpler structure and better control performance than depended on tan-type BLF. The presented controller can ensure that the formation errors converge to a small range around zero, while the output error constraint requirements are met. All signals in the closed-loop system are bounded, and the numerical simulation further shows the effectiveness of the presented control scheme.


2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 505-512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masato Yuasa ◽  
◽  
Ikuo Mizuuchi

<div class=""abs_img""><img src=""[disp_template_path]/JRM/abst-image/00260004/13.jpg"" width=""300"" />Plant pot robots “Plantroid”</span></div> Plant production factories and agricultural robots are being studied and developed these days. In these cultivation systems, however, it has been difficult to manage the state of each individual plant. We propose a cultivation system that uses a swarm of plant pot robots to automatically move each plant to an optimal environment, based on the plant’s sensory information and surroundings. In this paper, we propose a control method for the swarm of plant pot robots that uses artificial potential fields for effective temporal and spatial utilization of sunlight, and we show its effectiveness through simulation and experimentation. </span>


1999 ◽  
Vol 123 (3) ◽  
pp. 431-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Christian Gerdes ◽  
Eric J. Rossetter

This paper presents an approach to vehicle control based on the paradigm of artificial potential fields. Using this method, the dynamics of the vehicle are coupled with the environment in a manner that ensures that the system exhibits safe motion in the absence of driver inputs. The driver remains in control of the vehicle, however, with the control systems presenting a predictable and safe set of dynamics. With the control approach presented here, integration of various assistance systems is easily achieved through simple superposition of individual potential and damping functions. A simple example of a combined lanekeeping and stability system demonstrates how this can be accomplished. Preliminary simulation results suggest that both safety and driveability are achievable with such a system, prompting further investigation.


1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Christian Gerdes ◽  
Eric J. Rossetter

Abstract This paper presents an approach to vehicle control based upon the paradigm of artificial potential fields. Using this method, the dynamics of the vehicle are coupled with the environment in a manner that ensures that the system exhibits safe motion in the absence of driver inputs. The driver remains in control of the vehicle, however, with the control systems presenting a predictable and safe set of dynamics. With the control approach presented here, integration of various assistance systems can be easily achieved through simple superposition of individual potential and damping functions. A simple example of a combined lanekeeping and stability system demonstrates how this can be accomplished. Preliminary simulation results suggest that both safety and driveability are achievable with such a system, prompting further investigation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tayyab Khan ◽  
Karan Singh ◽  
Kamlesh C. Purohit

Background: With the growing popularity of various group communication applications such as file transfer, multimedia events, distance learning, email distribution, multiparty video conferencing and teleconferencing, multicasting seems to be a useful tool for efficient multipoint data distribution. An efficient communication technique depends on the various parameters like processing speed, buffer storage, and amount of data flow between the nodes. If data exceeds beyond the capacity of a link or node, then it introduces congestion in the network. A series of multicast congestion control algorithms have been developed, but due to the heterogeneous network environment, these approaches do not respond nor reduce congestion quickly whenever network behavior changes. Objective: Multicasting is a robust and efficient one-to-many (1: M) group transmission (communication) technique to reduced communication cost, bandwidth consumption, processing time and delays with similar reliability (dependability) as of regular unicast. This patent presents a novel and comprehensive congestion control method known as integrated multicast congestion control approach (ICMA) to reduce packet loss. Methods: The proposed mechanism is based on leave-join and flow control mechanism along with proportional integrated and derivate (PID) controller to reduce packet loss, depending on the congestion status. In the proposed approach, Proportional integrated and derivate controller computes expected incoming rate at each router and feedback this rate to upstream routers of the multicast network to stabilize their local buffer occupancy. Results: Simulation results on NS-2 exhibit the immense performance of the proposed approach in terms of delay, throughput, bandwidth utilization, and packet loss than other existing methods. Conclusion: The proposed congestion control scheme provides better bandwidth utilization and throughput than other existing approaches. Moreover, we have discussed existing congestion control schemes with their research gaps. In the future, we are planning to explore the fairness and quality of service issue in multicast communication.


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