Adaptive Formation Control for Multi-UAV Swarms in Cluttered Environments with Communication Delays Under Directed Switching Topologies

This paper addresses distributed formation control for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) operating in obstacle-dense environments under directed switching communication topologies. A leader–follower architecture is adopted, wherein the leader performs online trajectory replanning while followers rely on delayed and intermittently available neighbor information. To simultaneously tackle collision avoidance, formation feasibility under narrow passages, and communication intermittency, we propose an integrated deformable formation navigation framework. The framework couples Safe Flight Corridor (SFC)-constrained Bézier trajectory planning with a dynamic formation scaling mechanism, allowing the swarm to adaptively shrink or expand its geometric configuration when traversing constricted spaces, thereby ensuring all agents remain within certified collision-free corridors. A nonlinear distributed consensus-based estimator is designed to propagate leader reference states under directed switching graphs with bounded delays. Using a max-min contraction analytical approach, we establish guaranteed practical convergence for both leader tracking and inter-follower agreement without requiring persistent connectivity. Extensive simulations in complex cluttered environments demonstrate that the proposed approach enables flexible and real-time formation reshaping, enhancing navigational safety and robustness while maintaining cohesive swarm behavior under challenging communication and spatial constraints.