• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.121-127
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• 2011

This paper presents an autonomous formation flight algorithm for micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) and its flight test results. Since MAVs have severe limits on the payload and flight time, formation of MAVs can help alleviate the mission load of each MAV by sharing the tasks or coverage areas. The proposed formation guidance law is designed using nonlinear dynamic inversion method based on 'Leader-Follower' formation geometric relationship. The sensing of other vehicles in a formation is achieved by sharing the vehicles' states using a high-speed radio data link. the designed formation law was simulated with flight data of MAV to verify its robustness against sensor noises. A series of test flights were performed to validate the proposed formation guidance law. The test result shows that the proposed formation flight algorithm with inter-communication is feasible and yields satisfactory results.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.264-273
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• 2010

In this work, autonomous formation flight tests of multiple UAVs are experimentally studied. After a guidance and control system for a UAV is designed and tested, PID formation controller for follower UAV is tested using longitudinal and lateral distance feedback. It is shown that more stable and efficient formation guidance system is obtained by using position and attitude of the leader aircraft, which is exploited to calculate virtual waypoint for follower. In order to improve transient response during turn, part of roll command of the leader is added to the guidance command. Finally, autonomous formation flight test results of 3 UAVs are shown by using the best guidance algorithm suggested.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.17 no.9
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• pp.1092-1097
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• 2014

It is difficult to perform automatic formation flight of UAV (Unmanned Aerial vehicle) when GPS (Global Positionig System) is out of order or has a system error, since the relative position estimation in the flight group is impossible in that case. In this paper, we design a relative localization system for the automatic formation flight of UAV. For this purpose, we adopt digital beam forming (DBF) to estimate the angle with the central controller of the flight group and Particle Filtering scheme to compensate the estimation error of ToA (time of arrival) method. Computer simulation results present a proper distance between the central controller and a following unit to maintain the automatic formation flight.