scholarly journals Decentralized 3D Collision Avoidance for Multiple UAVs in Outdoor Environments

Sensors ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (12) ◽  
pp. 4101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo Ferrera ◽  
Alfonso Alcántara ◽  
Jesús Capitán ◽  
Angel Castaño ◽  
Pedro Marrón ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Collision Avoidance ◽  
System Integration ◽  
Field Experiments ◽  
Positioning Systems ◽  
Wind Gusts ◽  
Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Multiple Uavs ◽  
Outdoor Environments ◽  
External Conditions ◽  
Field Experimentation

The use of multiple aerial vehicles for autonomous missions is turning into commonplace. In many of these applications, the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have to cooperate and navigate in a shared airspace, becoming 3D collision avoidance a relevant issue. Outdoor scenarios impose additional challenges: (i) accurate positioning systems are costly; (ii) communication can be unreliable or delayed; and (iii) external conditions like wind gusts affect UAVs’ maneuverability. In this paper, we present 3D-SWAP, a decentralized algorithm for 3D collision avoidance with multiple UAVs. 3D-SWAP operates reactively without high computational requirements and allows UAVs to integrate measurements from their local sensors with positions of other teammates within communication range. We tested 3D-SWAP with our team of custom-designed UAVs. First, we used a Software-In-The-Loop simulator for system integration and evaluation. Second, we run field experiments with up to three UAVs in an outdoor scenario with uncontrolled conditions (i.e., noisy positioning systems, wind gusts, etc). We report our results and our procedures for this field experimentation.

scholarly journals Incorporation of Potential Fields and Motion Primitives for the Collision Avoidance of Unmanned Aircraft

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 3103
Author(s):  
Kyuman Lee ◽  
Daegyun Choi ◽  
Donghoon Kim
Keyword(s):  
Collision Avoidance ◽  
Search Algorithm ◽  
Unmanned Aircraft ◽  
Artificial Potential Field ◽  
Tree Search ◽  
Local Minima ◽  
Collision Risk ◽  
Motion Primitives ◽  
Multiple Uavs ◽  
Tree Search Algorithm

Collision avoidance (CA) using the artificial potential field (APF) usually faces several known issues such as local minima and dynamically infeasible problems, so unmanned aerial vehicles’ (UAVs) paths planned based on the APF are safe only in a certain environment. This research proposes a CA approach that combines the APF and motion primitives (MPs) to tackle the known problems associated with the APF. Since MPs solve for a locally optimal trajectory with respect to allocated time, the trajectory obtained by the MPs is verified as dynamically feasible. When a collision checker based on the k-d tree search algorithm detects collision risk on extracted sample points from the planned trajectory, generating re-planned path candidates to avoid obstacles is performed. After rejecting unsafe route candidates, one applies the APF to select the best route among the remaining safe-path candidates. To validate the proposed approach, we simulated two meaningful scenario cases—the presence of static obstacles situation with local minima and dynamic environments with multiple UAVs present. The simulation results show that the proposed approach provides smooth, efficient, and dynamically feasible pathing compared to the APF.

Intelligent cooperative collision avoidance via fuzzy potential fields

Robotica ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Daegyun Choi ◽  
Anirudh Chhabra ◽  
Donghoon Kim
Keyword(s):  
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Collision Avoidance ◽  
Fuzzy Inference ◽  
Potential Fields ◽  
Rule Base ◽  
Local Minima ◽  
Inference System ◽  
Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Different Shapes ◽  
Simulation Results

Summary This paper proposes an intelligent cooperative collision avoidance approach combining the enhanced potential field (EPF) with a fuzzy inference system (FIS) to resolve local minima and goal non-reachable with obstacles nearby issues and provide a near-optimal collision-free trajectory. A genetic algorithm is utilized to optimize parameters of membership function and rule base of the FISs. This work uses a single scenario containing all issues and interactions among unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for training. For validating the performance, two scenarios containing obstacles with different shapes and several UAVs in small airspace are considered. Multiple simulation results show that the proposed approach outperforms the conventional EPF approach statistically.

scholarly journals Distributed Cooperative Avoidance Control for Multi-Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Actuators ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunan Huang ◽  
Rodney Swee Huat Teo ◽  
Wenqi Liu
Keyword(s):  
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Collision Avoidance ◽  
Hardware In The Loop ◽  
Crucial Issue ◽  
Communication Failure ◽  
Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Avoidance Control ◽  
Velocity Obstacle ◽  
Multi Uav

It is well-known that collision-free control is a crucial issue in the path planning of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In this paper, we explore the collision avoidance scheme in a multi-UAV system. The research is based on the concept of multi-UAV cooperation combined with information fusion. Utilizing the fused information, the velocity obstacle method is adopted to design a decentralized collision avoidance algorithm. Four case studies are presented for the demonstration of the effectiveness of the proposed method. The first two case studies are to verify if UAVs can avoid a static circular or polygonal shape obstacle. The third case is to verify if a UAV can handle a temporary communication failure. The fourth case is to verify if UAVs can avoid other moving UAVs and static obstacles. Finally, hardware-in-the-loop test is given to further illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Experimenting in Democracy Promotion: International Observers and the 2004 Presidential Elections in Indonesia

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 511-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan D. Hyde
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Impact Evaluation ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Field Experiments ◽  
Democracy Promotion ◽  
Assistance Programs ◽  
Democracy Assistance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Election Monitoring ◽  
Field Experimentation

Randomized field experiments have gained attention within the social sciences and the field of democracy promotion as an influential tool for causal inference and a potentially powerful method of impact evaluation. With an eye toward facilitating field experimentation in democracy promotion, I present the first field-experimental study of international election monitoring, which should be of interest to both practitioners and academics. I discuss field experiments as a promising method for evaluating the effects of democracy assistance programs. Applied to the 2004 presidential elections in Indonesia, the random assignment of international election observers reveals that even though the election was widely regarded as democratic, the presence of observers had a measurable effect on votes cast for the incumbent candidate, indicating that such democracy assistance can influence election quality even in the absence of blatant election-day fraud.

Design and flight-stability analysis of a closed fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle formation controller

2018 ◽  
Vol 233 (8) ◽  
pp. 1045-1054 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jialong Zhang ◽  
Bing Xiao ◽  
Maolong Lv ◽  
Qiang Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Collision Avoidance ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Physical Simulation ◽  
Controller Design ◽  
Formation Flight ◽  
External Factors ◽  
Flight Stability ◽  
Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Closed Formation

This article addresses a flight-stability problem for the multiple unmanned aerial vehicles cooperative formation flight in the process of the closed and high-speed flight. The main objective is to design a cooperative formation controller with known external factors, and this controller can keep the consensus of attitude and position and reduce the communication delay between any two unmanned aerial vehicles and increase unmanned aerial vehicles formation cruise time under the known external factors. Known external factors are taken into consideration, and longitude maneuvers using nonlinear thrust vectors were employed with unsteady aerodynamic models, according to the attitude and position of unmanned aerial vehicles, which were employed as corresponding input signals for studying the dynamic characteristics of unmanned aerial vehicles formation flight. In addition, the relative distance between any two unmanned aerial vehicles was not allowed to exceed their safe distance so that the controller could perform collision avoidance. An analysis of formation flight distance error shows that it converged to a fixed value that well ensured unmanned aerial vehicles formation flight stability. The experimental results show that the controller can improve the speed of a closed formation effectively and maintain the stability of formation flight, which provides a method for closed formation flight controller design and collision avoidance for any two unmanned aerial vehicles. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of proposed controller is fully proved by semi-physical simulation platform.

Optimized artificial potential field algorithm to multi-unmanned aerial vehicle coordinated trajectory planning and collision avoidance in three-dimensional environment

2019 ◽  
Vol 233 (16) ◽  
pp. 6032-6043 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun Tang ◽  
Jiayi Sun ◽  
Cong Lu ◽  
Songyang Lao
Keyword(s):  
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Collision Avoidance ◽  
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle ◽  
Trajectory Planning ◽  
Potential Field ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Artificial Potential Field ◽  
Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Aerial Vehicle ◽  
Vehicle Trajectory

Multi-unmanned aerial vehicle trajectory planning is one of the most complex global optimum problems in multi-unmanned aerial vehicle coordinated control. Results of recent research works on trajectory planning reveal persisting theoretical and practical problems. To mitigate them, this paper proposes a novel optimized artificial potential field algorithm for multi-unmanned aerial vehicle operations in a three-dimensional dynamic space. For all purposes, this study considers the unmanned aerial vehicles and obstacles as spheres and cylinders with negative electricity, respectively, while the targets are considered spheres with positive electricity. However, the conventional artificial potential field algorithm is restricted to a single unmanned aerial vehicle trajectory planning in two-dimensional space and usually fails to ensure collision avoidance. To deal with this challenge, we propose a method with a distance factor and jump strategy to resolve common problems such as unreachable targets and ensure that the unmanned aerial vehicle does not collide into the obstacles. The method takes companion unmanned aerial vehicles as the dynamic obstacles to realize collaborative trajectory planning. Besides, the method solves jitter problems using the dynamic step adjustment method and climb strategy. It is validated in quantitative test simulation models and reasonable results are generated for a three-dimensional simulated urban environment.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document