Intelligent Management Control for Unmanned Aircraft Navigation and Formation Keeping

The paper presents some aspects that have become critical in the context of guidance, navigation, and control of unmanned aerial vehicles. The envisioned cost-effectiveness of unmanned air vehicles in support of a variety of military and civilian applications has introduced basic and applied research challenges in areas such as levels of autonomy and “intelligence” of the platform, interaction with manned control centers, reliability and safety of operations, and control management of single vehicle, as well as formation flights. The paper addresses issues such as dynamic modeling, formation management and control, and guidance aspects. Their origin and potential solutions are presented with particular attention to flexible formation keeping.