Composition of Safety Constraints for Fixed-Wing Collision Avoidance Amidst Limited Communications

Safety With Limited Range Sensing Constraints For Fixed Wing Aircraft

“…We do this by demonstrating how to adjust a barrier function that has been developed without considering sensing limitations into a barrier function that can still be used to guarantee safety when sensing limitations are present. We build on the work of [18] where it was shown how to ensure a system of k UAVs maintain safe distances for all time while taking into account dynamics constraints. However, [18] did not consider limited range sensing.…”

“…We build on the work of [18] where it was shown how to ensure a system of k UAVs maintain safe distances for all time while taking into account dynamics constraints. However, [18] did not consider limited range sensing. Thus, in this paper we relax this limitation with the following contributions.…”

“…Because collision avoidance is a pairwise constraint, we can then apply the method developed in this paper to all pairwise combinations of aircraft to ensure safety of the entire set of UAVs. We model fixed-wing UAVs similarly to [18], where the state of UAV i (i ∈ {1, 2}) is given by…”

“…This can be difficult when the system is subject to actuator constraints and nonlinear dynamics, as is the case for fixed-wing UAVs. Motivated by this, in [18], it was shown how to systematically construct a barrier function for fixed-wing UAVs. Although the formulation in [18] does not consider sensing limitations, we will show in this paper that the formulation can be adapted to create a barrier function that allows for safety guarantees even when there are sensing restrictions.…”

“…In [18], two cases of γ and ρ are considered for the calculation of h in (8) in closed form between vehicles 1 and 2. However, in these two cases sensing limitations were not considered.…”