Distributed reactive collision avoidance for a swarm of quadrotors

Abstract

The large-scale of unmanned aerial vehicle applications has escalated significantly within the last few years, and the current research is slowly hinting at a move from single vehicle applications to multivehicle systems. As the number of agents operating in the same environment grows, conflict detection and resolution becomes one of the most important factors of the autonomous system to ensure the vehicles’ safety throughout the completion of their missions. The work presented in this paper describes the implementation of the novel distributed reactive collision avoidance algorithm proposed in the literature, improved to fit a swarm of quadrotor helicopters. The original method has been extended to function in dense and crowded environments with relevant spatial obstacle constraints and deconfliction manoeuvres for high number of vehicles. Additionally, the collision avoidance is modified to work in conjunction with a dynamic close formation flight scheme. The solution presented to the conflict detection and Resolution problem is reactive and distributed, making it well suited for real-time applications. The final avoidance algorithm is tested on a series of crowded scenarios to test its performances in close quarters.