Bio-inspired Integrated Networking and Control for Large-Scale Swarm: A Hierarchical Co-design

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms encounter the challenge of high overhead due to both network management and formation control requirements. In this paper, we propose a Bio-inspired Integrated Networking and Control (BINC) scheme, enabling efficient formation management for swarms comprising thousands of UAVs. The scheme forms a two-layer hierarchical structure, where network clusters and formations share the same groups so that cross-cluster control is eliminated. For networking, we design a fused routing message together with control information to reduce overhead, and limit clusters' size to local two-hop topologies for fast command transmission. For controlling, we develop a hybrid bio-inspired control approach, including a pigeon-like leader-follower algorithm within formations under the consideration of cluster topology maintenance, and a starling-like algorithm among formations that helps to improve the ability of obstacle avoidance. We establish a simulation platform for UAV swarms with over 1000 nodes, and experimental results show that the proposed BINC scheme can achieve highly maneuverable swarm formation marching with significant reduction on communication overhead.