Distributed Formation Keeping Control for Multiple Hypersonic Gliding Vehicles Based on Fixed-time Consensus Theory

In this study, with an undirected communication topology, the control problem of formation keeping for the multiple hypersonic gliding vehicles (HGVs) is investigated. On the basis of the theory of fixed-time consensus, virtual control signals are designed to reduce the complexity for formation keeping problem of multiple HGVs. The formation keeping problem is addressed by control laws that makes the altitude and path angle of each vehicle consensus. Therefore, the virtual control signals for the altitude and path angle keeping controller are designed by using first-order fixed-time and second-order fixed-time consensus theory respectively. Meanwhile, upper bound of the settling time for virtual signals can be estimated ahead of time with the information of communication topology and the given control parameters. Simulation result is carried out to demonstrated the formation keeping control laws.