Distributed Differential Game for Formation Control of Multi-UAV with Obstacle Avoidance

For the multi-unmanned aerial vehicle formation control (MUAVFC) in obstacle environments, this work proposes a new distributed non-cooperative differential game framework. This scheme adequately reflects the dynamic interaction of each UAV in the formation control process and effectively reflects the interaction of individual strategies and behaviors. Meanwhile, the game model is added with obstacle avoidance penalty constraints to achieve obstacle avoidance in the UAV formation flight and ensure flight safety. Each UAV needs to obtain the information of its neighbors following the communication topology to minimize the cost function, so that all strategy converges to Nash equilibrium. Based on the existing differential game method that only considers the formation goal, this work adds a penalty function term representing the distance between obstacles in the game model to achieve flight obstacle avoidance. In addition, this work strictly proves the existence of Nash equilibrium. The simulation results verify that the UAVs in this scheme have successfully formed a formation.