Optimal event handling by multiple unmanned aerial vehicles

Abstract

This paper proposes a control architecture for a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles that is responsible for handling the events that take place in a given area. The architecture guarantees that each event is handled by the required number of vehicles in the shortest time, while the rest of the fleet is optimally distributed in order to achieve an optimal coverage of the area. Each vehicle is steered to the specified location by a path planner that follows the shortest path while avoiding collisions. The control architecture has been validated both in simulations and in experiments on a fleet of three vehicles.

Robust control of UAVs using the parameter space approach

“…Controllers were tuned using different approaches in order to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The first approach is conventional tuning using simulation results [16], the second is the Ziegler-Nichols method, and the third uses the PSA.…”

Adaptation to Unknown Leader Velocity in Vector-Field UAV Formation

“…Unfortunately, standard protocols for formation control, that can be grouped into two families, neglect this aspect. In the first family of protocols, the leader or the follower UAVs can communicate all of their states among each other (position, velocity, orientation, linear, and angular velocity) [25], [36]- [38], which can lead to high communication overhead; in the second family of protocols, it is assumed that the leader UAV has unknown states and therefore a distributed observer is designed to estimate the unknown states [39]- [41]. Unfortunately, standard distributed observers also requires the communication of extra variables, which are the auxiliary states of the distributed observer: communication of these variables will inevitably lead to high communication overhead.…”