Decentralized Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Swarm Formation and Flight Control

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) have become more popular for usage due to the low cost of deployment and maintenance. Single UAV employment allows remote area monitoring and transferring different payloads to inaccessible or dangerous zones for human. In order to deal with flight tasks that are more complex, UAV swarms are applied. The main challenge of UAV swarm formation and flight control is to avoid vehicle collisions. In this case, artificial intelligence is responsible for flight performance in the airspace in such way that collision is avoided. The main requirements to the method, which will provide conflict-free maneuvers, are safety (collision avoidance), liveness (decentralized control, destination area reachability) and flyability (UAV flight performance constraints are satisfied). Artificial force field method fulfills all of these demands. It allows to detect a potential conflict between multiple UAVs in a swarm and other static or moving obstacles found in airspace, to provide collision resolution by changing UAVs flight parameters through maintaining minimum separation distance, including cases when manned vehicles are found in the same airspace. There can be distinguished by a wide range of obstacles: static (buildings, restricted areas and bed weather conditions) and dynamic ones (other UAVs, manned aircraft). Method allows keeping UAV swarm shape on the flight path, taking into account ground speed and turn bank angle values restrictions according to UAV’s flight performance characteristics.