A new trophallactic strategy for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles flying in formation
The autonomous flying of multiple UAVs in formation is an important research area in the aerospace field. Professor Duan Haibin and his group members (Luo Qinan and YU Yaxiang) from the Science and Technology in Aircraft Control Laboratory, School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University set out to tackle this problem. Through 5 years of innovative research, they investigated the trophallactic mechanism behind social insects and developed a novel trophallaxis network control method for formation flight. They transferred the trophallaxis scenario to the context of a multi-UAV flight scenario and successfully tested and evaluated a new control strategy. Their work, entitled "Trophallaxis network control approach to formation flight of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles", was published in Science China Technological Sciences, 2013, Vol. 56(5).