Cooperative UAV Formation Control Simulated in X-Plane

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been used in a wide range of applications, due to high availability and low cost of their core components. One subject of research in the UAV field is the formation flying of a group of aircraft. In this paper, it is described the problem formulation for a formation of UAVs and the control law used to keep the aircraft in position. Following the theoretic model definition, additional information about its implementation and testing are provided: the algorithms were first tested in MATLAB((R)) and then implemented as a plugin for the X-Plane Flight Simulator. The results obtained by the simulation are then presented in this paper, showing the effectiveness of the formation representation and control law used to keep it in a predefined state.