Airship formation control

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem underlying the control and coordination of multiple autonomous airships that must travel maintaining a desired geometric formation and simultaneously avoid collisions with moving or stationary obstacles. The control architecture is based on the attractor dynamics approach to behaviour generation. The airship physical model is presented and the mathematical background for the control architecture is explained. Simulations (with perturbations) with formations of two and three autonomous airships are presented in order to validate the architecture.