Event-Triggered Dynamic Coverage Control for Multiple Stratospheric Airships

This article first investigates the dynamic coverage control problem for the multiple stratospheric airships (MSAs) system considering its practical application scenarios. A dynamic coverage control framework is put forward, in which the MSA system can be guided and controlled to fully cover the observation target region. Once a specific target is detected, the coverage target can be switched. First, the location information of the monitored target is predicted by an autoregressive model against processing delay. Second, the coverage control scheme consists of two layers: a novel potential field-based virtual control law to generate the desired velocity and angular velocity and an adaptive tracking controller to track them. In the virtual control law, a dynamic artificial potential field is introduced to adapt to the dynamic scenarios. In the tracking controller, which is combined with the adaptive control technique and the saturation compensator theory, the external disturbances and input saturation are addressed. Third, the event-triggered mechanism is designed to reduce the control frequency to prolong the actuator life. The simulation results are given to substantiate the capability of the proposed dynamic coverage control framework.