In this article, a novel time-coordination algorithm based on event-triggered
communications is proposed to achieve coordinated path-following of UAVs. To be
specific, in the approach adopted a UAV transmits its progression information
over a time-varying network to its neighbors only when a decentralized trigger
condition is satisfied, thereby significantly reducing the volume of
inter-vehicle communications required when compared with the existing
algorithms based on continuous communications. Using such intermittent
communications, it is shown that a decentralized coordination controller
guarantees exponential convergence of the coordination error to a neighborhood
of zero. Also, a lower bound on the interval between two consecutive
event-triggered times is provided showing that the chattering issue does not
arise with the proposed algorithm. Finally, simulation results validate the
efficacy of the proposed algorithm.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2307.0655