Control System Design for Autonomous Formation Flight

Recently swarm technology has provided new opportunities especially for aerial vehicle operations. Many missions have to be accomplished by pilots could be completed autonomously. However, autonomy of cooperated aerial vehicles consists of important complexities in control systems. The main purpose of this study is to design required autopilots for autonomous formation flight. For that, a leader and a follower aircraft are considered. A fully autonomous control system that provides the follower aircraft to track the leader aircraft is designed. Trajectory tracking is accomplished by a new geometric algorithm under effect of vortex caused by leader aircraft. The designed system controls formation flight autonomously.