Formation control of fixed-wing UAVs with communication delay

Fixed -wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) possess high speed and non -hovering capabilities, rendering them uniquely advantages for reconnaissance and detection. The focus of this paper is to addressing the problem of formation control for fixed -wing UAVs in the presence of communication delay. To tackle this problem, for the non-holonomic kinematic model, we propose an intuitive and practical control law based on the leaderfollower method to ensure that UAVs maintain a predetermined geometric formation. The stability analysis of the system with communication delay is conducted by constructing a strict Lyapunov-Krasovskii function. Furthermore, we consider the impact of communication delay on formation accuracy and present a prediction algorithm capable of forecasting the actual position of each UAV. To validate our theoretical findings, both digital simulation and hardware -in -loop experiment are conducted.