UCAV Formation Online Collaborative Trajectory Planning Using hp Adaptive Pseudospectral Method

In this paper, a novel approach to solving the formation online collaborative trajectory planning for fixed-wing Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) is proposed. In order to describe the problem, the formation attack process which consists of communication framework and synergy elements is analyzed. The collaborative trajectory planning model which is based on avoiding the threat zones, reducing the execution time, and accomplishing the mission combines kinematics/dynamics model of UCAV with formation relative motion model to establish the optimal control problem. The approach based on hp adaptive pseudospectral method is presented to generate formation trajectory that satisfies the collaborative constraints. When a trigger event is detected, based on the offline planning, the online collaborative trajectory replanning using rolling horizon strategy is carried out. Simulated experiments which are divided into offline scenarios and online scenarios demonstrate that the proposed approach can generate trajectories which can meet the actual flight constraints, and the results verify the feasibility and stability of the proposed approach.