Fixed-Wing UAVs Flock Control through Cohesion and Repulsion Behaviours Combined with a Leadership

Cezary Kownacki,Daniel Ołdziej

doi:10.5772/62249

Cezary Kownacki, Daniel Ołdziej

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5772/62249

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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present a novel approach to swarm control of small fixed-wing UAVs, which combines only two flocking behaviours with a leadership feature. In the presented approach, two fundamental rules of Reynolds flocking are applied, i.e., cohesion and repulsion, as the base of a decentralized control of self-organization of the flock. These rules are combined with a leadership feature, which is responsible for a global behaviour of guidance, as in the case of animals. Such a bio-inspired combination allows the achievement of a coherent collective flight of a flock of fixed-wing UAVs without applying formal behaviours of migration and alignment. This highly simplifies an implementation of the algorithm. The presented results include both numerical simulations and experimental flights, which validate the hardware implementation of the approach.

Highlights

Applications of swarm behaviours in robotics have been extensively developed for many years, resulting in the coherence of research areas such as swarm intelligence, multi-agent systems, robot collaboration, formation control, autonomous agents and sensor networks
Aerial flocking is an attractive possibility to achieve a coherent flight of a group of fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)
There is very little research focused on comprehensive experiments with aerial flock‐ ing applied to fixed-wing UAVs

Summary

Introduction

Applications of swarm behaviours in robotics have been extensively developed for many years, resulting in the coherence of research areas such as swarm intelligence, multi-agent systems, robot collaboration, formation control, autonomous agents and sensor networks. Due to the obvious complexity of the problem, most of the research carried out on swarm behaviours is limited to selected simulations or laboratory experiments that are focused on robots having the capability of omnidirectional motion [1]. In this case, it is easier to control robots’ interactions and the risk of communication failures is minimized. The autonomous control of a swarm of non-holonomic robots, which are able to operate in outdoor environments, becomes much more complex and compli‐ cated, due to the increased importance of robustness and autonomy These issues in particular concern a nonholonomic system, such as fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The same concerns simpler methods such as the leader-follower approach and its variant, which is based on a two-stage switching control [3]

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