A Method of Minimum-Time Formation Guidance Based on Optimal Solutions of Single Fixed-Wing Aircraft by using Homotopy Method

Abstract

This paper presents a method to derive a minimum-time formation guidance of fixed-wing aircraft which is based on optimal solutions of single aircraft. This problem is conventionally formulated by treating the aircraft as one group which means centralized control. Moreover, the computational time is increased rapidly as the number of aircraft is increased. On the other hand, it is solved by each aircraft with small communication in the proposed method. Further the computational time is not sensitive to the number of aircraft by using homotopy method. Numerical results show almost no difference about the time for the minimum-time formation and the effectiveness of the computational time.