Task priority approach to the coordinated control of a team of flying vehicles in the presence of obstacles

Abstract

This study describes the application of the task priority null-space behavioural technique to the coordinated control of a team of flying vehicles with hovering capabilities, such as helicopters or quadrotors, in the presence of obstacles and no-fly zones. Once a flight mission is assigned to the team in terms of a target region to reach, each flying vehicle is required to accomplish four tasks with assigned priorities. Formation flight and collisions avoidance with other vehicles and unknown or moving obstacles tasks are formulated via analytical expressions as required by the classical null-space behavioural approach. Move to target and a priori known obstacle avoidance behaviours are obtained by solving a partial differential equation problem within the flight domain. The effectiveness of the proposed technique is discussed with regards to two-dimensional and three-dimensional numerical examples.

Distributed Navigation in Emergency Scenarios: A Case Study on Post-Avalanche Search and Rescue Using Drones

“…The advent of UAVs was an important addition to search-and-rescue operations, but the use of single UAVs is not always the most efficient solution for completing missions [2][3][4][5]. Depending on the type of operation, the collaboration of more agents with the same objectives can enhance overall efficiency.…”

Event-Triggered Coordination for Formation Tracking Control in Constrained Space With Limited Communication

“…The topic of cooperative control in restricted space has attracted increasing attention from researchers in different areas and many achievements have be reported [22], [23], [24], [25]. In [26], a scaling matrix was introduced to scale up or scale down the specific geometric formation shape depending on the given task in a bounded region.…”