Time-optimal control of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles with human control input

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate time-optimal control problems for multiple unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems to achieve predefined flying shape. Design/methodology/approach Two time-optimal protocols are proposed for the situations with or without human control input, respectively. Then, Pontryagin’s minimum principle approach is applied to deal with the time-optimal control problems for UAV systems, where the cost function, the initial and terminal conditions are given in advance. Moreover, necessary conditions are derived to ensure that the given performance index is optimal. Findings The effectiveness of the obtained time-optimal control protocols is verified by two contrastive numerical simulation examples. Consequently, the proposed protocols can successfully achieve the prescribed flying shape. Originality/value This paper proposes a solution to solve the time-optimal control problems for multiple UAV systems to achieve predefined flying shape.