On April 30th, 2018, College of Engineering (COE) presented the performance “Air”——which was part of the project “Sea, Land and Air”, a gift for the 120th anniversary of Peking University. The video of the autonomous cooperative formation of the unmanned aerial vehicles group was displayed on the large screen of the Youth Playground and the No. 1 building of COE.The idea, research and production of the project were completed by the Intelligent Bionic Design Laboratory (IBDL) which is led by Professor Xie Guangming of COE. It not only showed the ability in the frontier science and technology of COE, but also presented a unique and precious birthday present for the 120th anniversary of Peking University.

In the video, Professor Xie's group showed the busy daily work, outdoor UAV experiments, the multi-UAV formation cruising flight, and the simulation of multi-UAV formation.

The UAVs for autonomous cooperative formation

In the part of multi-UAV formation, 54 UAVs and 120 UAVs flew to the sky and formed the words "PKU", "120" and "COE" in turn. 54 UAVs symbolize the birthday of the Peking University on May 4th, 120 UAVs expressed the deep birthday wishes of COE to Peking University for its 120th anniversary. The students’ love to Peking University, the interests of scientific research, were vividly displayed on the flying picture.

The multi-UAV formation is a difficult problem in the development of UAV. In order to achieve consistent formation transformation, the UAVs must have a real-time and unimpeded communication mode, a precise and stable control method, and an accurate position estimation. It is necessary to configure communication between base stations and multiple UAVs according to the number of UAVs, so as to ensure synchronization, without interfering with each other. In the control method, it is necessary to ensure the strict collision avoidance between UAVs, and keep the graceful transformation of the formation, which will involve the technical difficulties such as aerodynamics, self stabilization control and cluster cooperation. After more than 7 months of independent research, Professor Xie's group successfully solved the difficulties of multi-UAV formation cruising, and finally gave the school a perfect present.

54 UAVs formed the word "PKU"

120 UAVs formed the word "120"

On the 120th anniversary of Peking University, the "Intelligent Bionic Design Laboratory" was set up by COE. It is led by Professor Guangming Xie ,Zhili Sun and Yue Cui. And it focused on the design, research and practical application of intelligent bionic equipment. UAV formation cruising is one of the main research subjects of Professor Xie's group, It is actually a group control technology and it has wide applications. Except UAV, the group is also on the international frontier in the direction of intelligent bionic robotic fish. The intelligent biomimetic robotic fish developed by the laboratory not only swam in the Weiming Lake, but also has successfully swum in the Antarctic and Arctic.

During the university celebration, the UAV formation video will be played on the big screen in the Youth Playground and the No.1 building of COE. Teachers and students are welcome to watch it. You can also enjoy it quickly through the network platform.

（https://v.qq.com/x/page/c06431mekcx.html）。

COE News, PKU：http://www.coe.pku.edu.cn/news-topic/5386