Abstract: The multi-unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) cooperative tracking can not only get the information of targets in various directions, but also respond to the interference of obstacles and reduce the probability of losing the targets. A distributed guidance law is presented for multi-UAV cooperative tracking that relies only on information of target and neighboring UAVs. The distributed guidance law is used to avoid the dependence of UAV formation on the leaders in traditional leader-follower method and improve the robustness of formation. A distributed cooperative guidance law of multi-UAVs based on relative distance and bearing angle was designed for stationary targets, and the stability of the cooperative guidance law was proved. The guidance law is used for tracking the targets with constant and variable speeds. The hardware-in-the-loop simulation of multi-UAVs tracking the targets was made by using the X-Plane software, MATLAB/Simulink software and flight controller (hardware). The simulated results show the effectiveness of proposed guidance law.Key

Key words: unmannedaerialvehicle, distributed, formation, cooperativetracking, circumnavigation, guidancelaw, stability