Coordinated Landing Control for Cross-Domain UAV-USV Fleets Using Heterogeneous-Feature Matching

Abstract

Coordinated landing control for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) on appropriate multiple unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) is an urgent yet challenging mission with the tremendous development of modern marine industry. To this end, we propose a coordinated multiple UAV-USV landing control algorithm via heterogeneous-feature matching. Specifically, the heterogeneous landing features of different UAVs and USVs are extracted to establish a dynamic UAV-USV cooperative landing ability mapping for the cross-domain UAV-USV fleets (CDUUFs). Then, by incorporating suitable allocation with UAV-USV landing convergence and collision avoidance among UAVs into constraints with the assistance of both control Lyapunov functions (CLFs) and control barrier functions (CBFs), the multiple UAV-USV landing control problem is formulated as a constraint-based optimization one. Therein, slack variables are introduced to fulfill the assignment and facilitate the searching of a balanced solution between control performance and landing safety. Finally, extensive simulations are conducted to substantiate the effectiveness of the present multiple UAV-USV landing control law.