Bird Flocking Inspired Control Strategy for Multi-UAV Collective Motion

TL;DR

This paper introduces a bird flocking-inspired distributed control strategy for multi-UAV systems, improving stability and collision avoidance, and demonstrating effective indoor and outdoor collective motion without GPS.

Contribution

It proposes an optimized flocking-based control law for UAVs that enhances stability and collision avoidance in a distributed manner, applicable in GPS-denied environments.

Findings

Achieved stable UAV collective motion in GPS-denied environments

Optimized control law improves inter-agent distance regulation

Simulation results confirm velocity convergence and collision avoidance

Abstract

UAV collective motion has become a hot research topic in recent years. The realization of UAV collective motion, however, relied heavily on centralized control method and suffered from instability. Inspired by bird flocking theory, a control strategy for UAV collective motion with distributed measure and control methods was proposed in this study. In order to appropriately adjust the inter-agent distance suitable for realization, the control law based on bird flocking theory was optimized, and the convergence of velocities and collision avoidance properties were presented through simulation results. Furthermore, the stable collective motion of two UAVs using visual relative information only with proposed strategy in both indoor and outdoor GPS-denied environments were realized.