Decentralised, Self-Organising Drone Swarms using Coupled Oscillators

TL;DR

This paper introduces a decentralized, self-organizing drone swarm system based on coupled oscillators, enhancing flexibility, resilience, and scalability in dynamic environments with minimal communication interference.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach using coupled oscillators for autonomous drone swarm coordination, enabling spontaneous formation and adaptive behavior without central control.

Findings

Swarm can spontaneously form with variable drone numbers

System maintains cohesion despite environmental changes

Communication interference is effectively minimized

Abstract

The problem of robotic synchronisation and coordination is a long-standing one. Combining autonomous, computerised systems with unpredictable real-world conditions can have consequences ranging from poor performance to collisions and damage. This paper proposes using coupled oscillators to create a drone swarm that is decentralised and self organising. This allows for greater flexibility and adaptiveness than a hard-coded swarm, with more resilience and scalability than a centralised system. Our method allows for a variable number of drones to spontaneously form a swarm and react to changing swarm conditions. Additionally, this method includes provisions to prevent communication interference between drones, and signal processing techniques to ensure a smooth and cohesive swarm.