Formation control of unmanned aerial vehicles for dynamic formation reshaping to abruptly arising environmental features

Date

2023-7

Author

Çimen, Sinan

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A group of UAVs flying in formation in crowded environments must make decisions on changes to their formation in order to adapt to sudden emergence of new environmental features with minimal delays. In addition to typical tasks such as area coverage, exploration, and collective transportation, an alert formation control method is required to quickly adapt to new features. This approach builds upon an existing method that utilizes constrained optimization and multi-robot consensus to calculate formation parameters. We have enhanced this formation control method with a novel ability to split and merge in order to reconstruct the formation when disruptions occur during adaptation to environmental features. In this approach, the robots collectively decide on a direction to move, and then identify obstacle-free convex regions to determine a volume where the formation can fit, aligned with the chosen direction. Next, an optimization process is performed by considering the intersection of these regions with constraints imposed by the desired formation shape, in order to determine suitable formation parameters that align with the environmental conditions. Once the formation parameters are determined, target positions are assigned to each robot with the objective of minimizing the overall mission completion time. The validity of the system is demonstrated through simulations conducted in the Microsoft AirSim environment.

Subject Keywords

Multi-agent systems, Formation control, UAV, Obstacle avoidance, Swarm robotics

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/105172

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis