Towards Autonomous Micro UAV Swarms

Abstract

Micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) such as quadrocopters have gained great popularity over the last years, both as a research platform and in various application fields.However, some complex application scenarios call for the formation of swarms consisting of multiple drones. In this paper a platform for the creation of such swarms is presented. It is based on commercially available quadrocopters enhanced with on-board processing and communication units enabling full autonomy of individual drones. Furthermore, a generic ground control station is presented that serves as integration platform. It allows the seamless coordination of different kinds of sensor platforms.

Mobile sensor platforms: categorisation and research applications in precision farming

“…Aside from the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany, the Fraunhofer Institute, Karlsruhe, Germany, the ETH Zurich, Switzerland, as well the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA, and the Center for Collaborative Control of Unmanned Vehicles at the University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA are all working in the field of UAS swarm intelligence (Bürkle et al, 2011;Schattenberg et al, 2011;Schoellig et al, 2012;Kushleyev et al, 2012). In the future, multiple vehicle units will also be capable of path planning and interacting within a whole fleet (Barrientos et al, 2011;Cartade et al, 2012).…”

A meta-analysis of human-system interfaces in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm management

“…Bürkle et al (2011) tested a two operator console that allowed operator customization to fit several types of possible missions or UAV swarms. By sharing responsibilities between two individuals, the researchers found that operators had a lower cognitive workload and felt more effective at controlling the swarm.…”

“…Several papers examined the possibility of spreading the work among multiple operators. For Bürkle et al (2011), giving two individuals joint responsibility for a swarm was effective at reducing cognitive tunneling and the loss of SA that comes with it. Their small study divided responsibilities between a pilot, who controlled the UAV swarm's flight and sensor focus, and an analyst, who "obtain[ed] and ke[pt] an overview of the situation and inform [ed] the higher authorities about important discoveries" (Bürkle et al, 2011, p. 346).…”

“…These challenges come from human cognitive limitations (Cummings and Mitchell, 2008;Frische and Ludtke, 2013), current hardware/software limitations in the swarm control systems, and issues with human-system interaction such as confusing layouts, unclear control structures, etc. (Amelink et al, 2008;Bürkle et al, 2011). Although some research has been conducted into human-system interfaces for swarms, many current interface designs and theories are based on research performed on airplane/helicopter pilots, video game players/interfaces, and interfaces for managing a single UAV (Kolling et al, 2013).…”

Small unmanned airborne systems to support oil and gas pipeline monitoring and mapping

“…Some technological improvements are still required to this end: charging base stations at the end of each pipe leg, autonomous decision capacity for recharge or return to base in case of too bad weather conditions. Work on that direction has already been done (Bürkle et al 2011), and the feasibility of the small UAV swarm technology has been tested, demonstrating capacity of individual vehicles to collect and use data whilst communicating with each other to support a unified mission. Once the technology matures, swarms of small UAVs are expected to be particularly useful in rescue operations (Qi et al 2015).…”