Effects of Packet Losses on Formation Control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Abstract

In this paper, the impact of the main packet loss models on the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) formation control has been evaluated. A simulation environment has been built to introduce a centralized architecture, usually employed in mobile robotics to pursue global tasks, in the presence of loss models affecting the communication through robots hops. Simulation results show that the control performance in terms of tracking, collision avoidance and loss of connectivity are affected by the specific characteristics of packet loss. This suggests that the design of UAV formation control over wireless network has to be carried out strongly taking into account the effects of specific packet loss characteristics (due to wireless protocol, disturbance, traffic) on the performance quality.