Methods of Information Processing of Relative Motion in the Flying Groups of UAV

Introduction

Currently, there is an increase in the level of interest in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). UAVs are freely used around the world. UAVs, as a rule, have only two main purposes: scouts and targets. To date, the UAV for the application and capabilities of UAVs has expanded significantly, there are many new challenges for existing and promising UAVs, both military and free. For example, the use of weapons (Predator), hours-long flights (“Global Hawk”), agricultural tasks, etc.

In this series, one of the most important is the task of ensuring group UAV flight. When solving it, a number of significant technical problems arise, the search for solutions to which are currently being carried out in a number of countries. The existing developments in the field of automatic control of group flights of UAVs so far have focused mainly on the control of the system of manned aircraft with long ranges between them, and for UAV, flight requirements are put forward in flight with distances and intervals of 10-100 meters.

In this article, the author investigates information processing algorithms in order to determine the relative UAV motion parameters in a group flight and proposes an algorithm for estimating the leading UAV motion parameters from the results of relative motion measurements.

The modern development of aviation has set the task of performing a joint flight of a group of unmanned aerial vehicles. In this regard, the task of managing UAV in a group with high accuracy is of particular importance. The need to develop UAV flight technology in the ranks is currently putting forward a very important direction: the creation of inter-aircraft navigation systems (IANS) for UAVs with very limited weight and volume. This need is also determined by the fact that the absence of UAV IANS in on-board equipment can significantly limit their capabilities in some cases.

For several reasons, the task of automatic flight control of aircraft in a group manner is one of the most complex and specific scientific and technical problems of aviation, requiring a comprehensive solution. It consists in the need for tactical substantiation of rational types of lines, the number of UAVs in a group, in determining the ideology of collecting UAVs in a group, in choosing methods for synchronously controlling each UAVs of a group to ensure flight safety and for each UAV group to maintain their place in the ranks in straight and curved sections flight of the whole group as a whole. Moreover, the ability to control the group is complicated by the unsteadiness of the flight parameters. UAV management methods define the basic principles that are used in the design of UAV control systems in a group.

It is clear that to ensure the necessary accuracy of the flight control process, UAV IANS should be built in the form of a system with feedback on information about the relative position. This allows, from a single point of view, to consider the UAV flight control system in the ranks and give a unified mathematical basis for its description. UAV flight control automation in a group order is associated not only with the development of theoretical flight fundamentals, but also with the development of on-board technical means for measuring relative position and control systems. The analysis of the state of the means for determining mutual coordinates showed that none of the existing and currently being developed measuring tools provides modern requirements for determining mutual coordinates in dense groups.

The creation of instruments for measuring the relative location of UAVs in a group does not completely solve the problem of ensuring UAV flight operations. It is also necessary to solve the problem of automating the processing of information on the parameters of relative motion and flight parameters in order to form control algorithms. Due to the complexity of the task, various approaches to its solution are possible, differing both in the distribution of control functions between the ground control point and the board, and in the choice of principles that can be taken as the basis of the control system and which determine its structural and dynamic characteristics.

The mathematical basis of the methods for solving the problems of inter-aircraft navigation considered in this paper is the theory of estimation and filtering.