AUTHOR=Huang Hanqiao , Mei Hantong , Yan Tian , Wang Bolan , Xu Feihong , Zhou Daming 

TITLE=Performance-guaranteed distributed control for multiple plant protection UAVs with collision avoidance and a directed topology

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Plant Science

VOLUME=Volume 13 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2022.949857

DOI=10.3389/fpls.2022.949857

ISSN=1664-462X

ABSTRACT=The urgent requirement for improving the efficiency of agricultural plant protection operations has spurred considerable interests in multiple plant protection UAVs systems. In this paper, a performance guaranteed distributed control scheme is developed, in order to address the control of multiple plant protection UAVs systems with collision avoidance and a directed topology. Firstly, a novel concept called predetermined time performance function (PTPF) is proposed, such that the tracking error can converge to an arbitrary small preassigned region in finite-time. Secondly, combined with the two-order filter for each UAV, the information estimation from the leader is generated. The distributed protocol avoids the use of asymmetric Laplace matrix of a directed graph and solves the difficulty of control design. Furthermore, by introducing with a collision prediction mechanism, a repulsive force field is constructed between the dynamic obstacle and the UAV, in order to avoid collision. Finally, it is rigorously proved that the consensus of the multiple plant protection UAVs system can be achieved while guaranteeing the predetermined time performance. A numerical simulation is carried out to verify the effectiveness of presented method, such that the multiple UAVs system can fulfil time-constrained plant protection tasks for agriculture applications.