Collision-Free Motion Planning for Formation Control of UAV Swarm Using Velocity Field

Abstract

This work proposes a new method of motion planning for swarm UAVs to make specific formation patterns while avoiding collisions.

The swarm of UAVs move to their targets without any individual controls during the autonomous driving.

Each individual UAV should go to its predetermined goal location while avoiding collisions with the others in a 3D space.

This work proposes a collision-free navigation method based on the composition of velocity fields for drones to form an easily recognizable shape and a new goal assignment method for a quick and reliable 3D formation, which is called the Farthest-First method.

The performance of the suggested methods was verified and characterized by motion simulations of UAVs in MATLAB and V-REP.