Autonomous Cooperative Multi-Vehicle System for Interception of Aerial and Stationary Targets

Abstract

This paper presents the design, development, and testing of hardware-software systems by the IISc-TCS team for Challenge 1 of the Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Challenge 2020. The goal of Challenge 1 was to grab a ball suspended from a maneuvering UAV and pop balloons anchored to the ground, using suitable manipulators. The important tasks carried out to address this challenge include the design and development of a hardware system with efficient grabbing and popping mechanisms, considering the restrictions in volume and payload, design of accurate target interception algorithms using visual information suitable for outdoor environments, and development of a software architecture for dynamic, multi-agent, aerial systems performing complex tasks. In this paper, we discuss the design of a custom end-effector mounted on a single degree of freedom manipulator, and robust algorithms for the interception of targets in an uncertain environment. Vision-based guidance and tracking strategies are developed based on the concept of pursuit engagement and artificial potential function. The software architecture presented in this work develops an Operation Management System (OMS) architecture that allocates static and dynamic tasks collaboratively among multiple UAVs to perform any given task. An important aspect of this work is that all the systems developed were designed to operate in completely autonomous mode. A detailed description of the architecture along with simulations of complete challenge in the Gazebo environment and field experiment results are also included in this work. The developed hardware-software system is useful for counter-UAV systems and can be used for other applications.

Design and integration of a drone based passive manipulator for capturing flying targets

“…The manipulator is tested for stationary drone as well as straight and curved paths of the drone carrying the ball. The control and vision modules for autonomous grabbing are the same as in the given [33, 39] references. The details of the test setup are given below.

Figure 13. Test setup for stationary and moving ball capture.

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“…Once the manipulator drone nears the ball, the drone performs a terminal maneuver to capture the ball. The details of software framework employed for autonomous ball grabbing are beyond the scope of the present paper and are available in another publication (see Tony et al [33]).…”

“…Since the focus of this paper is manipulator design and analysis, the guidance and control aspects related to the autonomous moving target capture are not included in this work. However, the details on the software modules used can be found in Tony et al [33] The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 describes the problem statement along with the design requirements. Section 3 presents the challenges involved in achieving the task.…”

“…Since the focus of this paper is manipulator design and analysis, the guidance and control aspects related to the autonomous moving target capture are not included in this work. However, the details on the software modules used can be found in Tony et al [33]…”

Cyclone Preparedness, Rescue Operations and Damage Assessment using UAVs

“…The software architecture should be designed to incorporate the commercial UAVs with little modification. Software architecture proposed by Agnel Tony et al (2021) for multi-drone mission could be used for integration of autopilot of commercial UAV. This will also help in scaling the UAV operations with different UAV systems.…”