Multi-robot Task Assignment for Aerial Tracking with Viewpoint Constraints

TL;DR

This paper presents a two-stage planning approach for multi-robot drone teams to autonomously capture dynamic target shots with viewpoint constraints, combining offline assignment and online viewpoint optimization.

Contribution

It introduces a novel two-stage planning pipeline integrating offline assignment via ILP and online viewpoint optimization for drone-based target tracking.

Findings

Validated in hardware with two drones and a remote-controlled car.

Effective assignment and viewpoint optimization in obstacle-rich environments.

Real-time online control based on offline planning results.

Abstract

We address the problem of assigning a team of drones to autonomously capture a set desired shots of a dynamic target in the presence of obstacles. We present a two-stage planning pipeline that generates offline an assignment of drone to shots and locally optimizes online the viewpoint. Given desired shot parameters, the high-level planner uses a visibility heuristic to predict good times for capturing each shot and uses an Integer Linear Program to compute drone assignments. An online Model Predictive Control algorithm uses the assignments as reference to capture the shots. The algorithm is validated in hardware with a pair of drones and a remote controlled car.