No-reference Path Receding Horizon Control for Multi-UAV Formation Reconfiguration Based on Adaptive Differential Evolution

As unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have limited energy resources and diverse constraints, the reconfiguration of their formation encounters substantial challenges. In this paper, we employ a leader-follower method. In order to minimize flight distance and resource consumption, a greedy algorithm is used to allocate leader and follower positions. Based on the limitations of the receding horizon control (RHC) method and the control parameterization and time discretization (CPTD) method, we propose the no reference path RHC (NRPRHC) method. The proposed method transforms the formation reconfiguration into smaller local optimization problems, leading to a reduction in the size of the optimization stages and computational complexity. For each local optimization problem, we propose the adaptive population differential evolution (APDE) algorithm to optimize the control inputs. Finally, the results are provided to illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.