Reachable Set Approach to Collision Avoidance for UAVs

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel collision avoidance method for UAVs using reachable sets and convex optimization, enhancing safety in various UAV applications like surveillance and disaster response.

Contribution

It presents a new reachable set-based collision avoidance algorithm formulated as a convex optimization problem, applicable to different UAV types.

Findings

Successfully applied to quadrotors and fixed-wing aircraft scenarios

Demonstrated effectiveness in collision avoidance

Provides a systematic control constraint set formulation

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a reachable set based collision avoidance algorithm for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). UAVs have been deployed for agriculture research and management, surveillance and sensor coverage for threat detection and disaster search and rescue operations. It is essential for the aircraft to have on-board collision avoidance capability to guarantee safety. Instead of the traditional approach of collision avoidance between trajectories, we propose a collision avoidance scheme based on reachable sets and tubes. We then formulate the problem as a convex optimization problem seeking suitable control constraint sets for participating aircraft. We have applied the approach on a case study of two quadrotors and two fix-wing aircraft collision avoidance scenario.