Aiming at the problem that the traditional artificial potential field (tAPF) method is prone to local minima, which leads to the unreachable formation target and the large oscillation of obstacle avoidance trajectory, a multi-level UAV formation obstacle avoidance method based on centripetal force heuristic is proposed. The influence range of obstacles is divided into ordinary obstacle avoidance area and compulsory obstacle avoidance area, and the UAV analyzes the area in real time, and adjusts the obstacle avoidance algorithm according to the corresponding area to realize the overall flexible obstacle avoidance of the formation. The simulation results show that the obstacle avoidance strategy is safe and feasible, which provides an idea for multi-UAV formation obstacle avoidance.