Distributed Control for 3D Inspection using Multi-UAV Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a distributed control algorithm enabling multiple UAVs to cooperatively inspect 3D structures efficiently and collision-free, demonstrated through extensive simulations on real-world objects.

Contribution

It presents a novel distributed control method for collision-free, time-efficient 3D inspection by multi-UAV systems, advancing autonomous inspection capabilities.

Findings

The algorithm ensures collision-free trajectories for multi-UAV inspection.

Simulations validate the effectiveness on real 3D structures.

The approach reduces inspection time compared to existing methods.

Abstract

Cooperative control of multi-UAV systems has attracted substantial research attention due to its significance in various application sectors such as emergency response, search and rescue missions, and critical infrastructure inspection. This paper proposes a distributed control algorithm to generate collision-free trajectories that drive the multi-UAV system to completely inspect a set of 3D points on the surface of an object of interest. The objective of the UAVs is to cooperatively inspect the object of interest in the minimum amount of time. Extensive numerical simulations for a team of quadrotor UAVs inspecting a real 3D structure illustrate the validity and effectiveness of the proposed approach.