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Love Thy Neighbor: V-Formation as a Problem of Model Predictive Control (Invited Paper)

Authors Junxing Yang, Radu Grosu, Scott A. Smolka, Ashish Tiwari

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Keywords
  • bird flocking
  • v-formation
  • model predictive control
  • particle swarm optimization

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Abstract

We present a new formulation of the V-formation problem for migrating birds in terms of model predictive control (MPC). In our approach, to drive a collection of birds towards a desired formation, an optimal velocity adjustment (acceleration) is performed at each time-step on each bird's current velocity using a model-based prediction window of $T$ time-steps.  We present both centralized and distributed versions of this approach.  The optimization criteria we consider are based on fitness metrics of candidate accelerations that birds in a V-formations are known to benefit from, including velocity matching, clear view, and upwash benefit. We validate our MPC-based approach by showing that for a significant majority of simulation runs, the flock succeeds in forming the desired formation.  Our results help to better understand the emergent behavior of formation flight, and provide a control strategy for flocks of autonomous aerial vehicles.

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Junxing Yang, Radu Grosu, Scott A. Smolka, and Ashish Tiwari. Love Thy Neighbor: V-Formation as a Problem of Model Predictive Control (Invited Paper). In 27th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2016). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 59, pp. 4:1-4:5, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2016) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2016.4

Author Details

Junxing Yang
Radu Grosu
Scott A. Smolka
Ashish Tiwari

References

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