On the Generation of Trajectories for Multiple UAVs in Environments with Obstacles

This paper presents a methodology based on a variation of the Rapidly-exploring Random Trees (RRTs) that generates feasible trajectories for a team of autonomous aerial vehicles with holonomic constraints in environments with obstacles. Our approach uses Pythagorean Hodograph (PH) curves to connect vertices of the tree, which makes it possible to generate paths for which the main kinematic constraints of the vehicle are not violated. These paths are converted into trajectories based on feasible speed profiles of the robot. The smoothness of the acceleration profile of the vehicle is indirectly guaranteed between two vertices of the RRT tree. The proposed algorithm provides fast convergence to the final trajectory. We still utilize the properties of the RRT to avoid collisions with static, environment bound obstacles and dynamic obstacles, such as other vehicles in the multi-vehicle planning scenario. We show results for a set of small unmanned aerial vehicles in environments with different configurations.     

基于凸面体圆弧航路的无人机自主避障算法

为解决无人机飞行过程中障碍物规避问题,提出一种新的三维自主避障算法.首先,根据障碍物的若干信息利用标准凸面体对不规则障碍物进行数学建模,用一个或多个标准凸面体覆盖障碍物整体或关键部分;然后,根据障碍物模型设计圆弧规避航路算法,将避障问题转化为跟踪规避航路控制问题,并定义避障判定、避障方向判断和成功避障规则;最后,结合非...     

Continuous Airborne Communication Relay Approach Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

As a result of unmanned aerial vehicles being widely used in different areas, studies about increasing the autonomous capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles are gaining momentum. Today, unmanned aerial vehicle platforms are especially used in reconnaissance, surveillance and communications areas. In this study, in order to achieve continuous long-range communication relay infrastructure, artificial potential field based path planning of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles is discussed. A novel dynamic approach to relay-chain concept is proposed to maintain the communication between vehicles. Besides dynamically keeping vehicles in range and appropriate position to maintain communication relay, artificial potential field based path planning also provides collision avoidance system. The performance of the proposed system is measured by applying a simulation under the Matlab Simulink and Network Simulator environment. Artificial potential field based flight patterns are generated in Matlab, and performance of the communication between vehicles is measured in Network Simulation environment. Finally the simulation results show that an airborne communication relay can be established autonomously by using artificial potential filed based autonomous path planning approach. Continues state communication is provided by obtaining a resistant communication relay which depends on artificial potential field based positioning algorithm.     

Trajectory time scaling of a mobile robot to avoid dynamic obstacles on the basis of the INLVO

To ensure the collision safety of mobile robots, the velocity of dynamic obstacles should be considered while planning the robot’s trajectory for high-speed navigation tasks. A planning scheme that computes the collision avoidance trajectory by assuming static obstacles may result in obstacle collisions owing to the relative velocities of dynamic obstacles. This article proposes a trajectory time-scaling scheme that considers the velocities of dynamic obstacles. The proposed inverse nonlinear velocity obstacle (INLVO) is used to compute the nonlinear velocity obstacle based on the known trajectory of the mobile robot. The INLVO can be used to obtain the boundary conditions required to avoid a dynamic obstacle. The simulation results showed that the proposed scheme can deal with typical collision states within a short period of time. The proposed scheme is advantageous because it can be applied to conventional trajectory planning schemes without high computational costs. In addition, the proposed scheme for avoiding dynamic obstacles can be used without an accurate prediction of the obstacle trajectories owing to the fast generation of the time-scaling trajectory.     

An Integral Framework of Task Assignment and Path Planning for Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Dynamic Environments

In this paper, a hierarchical framework for task assignment and path planning of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in a dynamic environment is presented. For multi-agent scenarios in dynamic environments, a candidate algorithm should be able to replan for a new path to perform the updated tasks without any collision with obstacles or other agents during the mission. In this paper, we propose an intersection-based algorithm for path generation and a negotiation-based algorithm for task assignment since these algorithms are able to generate admissible paths at a smaller computing cost. The path planning algorithm is also augmented with a potential field-based trajectory replanner, which solves for a detouring trajectory around other agents or pop-up obstacles. For validation, test scenarios for multiple UAVs to perform cooperative missions in dynamic environments are considered. The proposed algorithms are implemented on a fixed-wing UAVs testbed in outdoor environment and showed satisfactory performance to accomplish the mission in the presence of static and pop-up obstacles and other agents.     

A Multi-Point Distance-Bounding Protocol for Securing Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Applications

The Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) protocol is being adopted for use in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as the primary source of information for emerging multi-UAV collision avoidance algorithms. The lack of security features in ADS-B leaves any processes dependent upon the information vulnerable to a variety of threats from compromised and dishonest UAVs. This could result in substantial losses or damage to properties. This research proposes a new distance-bounding scheme for verifying the distance and flight trajectory in the ADS-B broadcast data from surrounding UAVs. The proposed scheme enables UAVs or ground stations to identify fraudulent UAVs and avoid collisions. The scheme was implemented and tested in the ArduPilot SITL (Software In The Loop) simulator to verify its ability to detect fraudulent UAVs. The experiments showed that the scheme achieved the desired accuracy in both flight trajectory measurement and attack detection.

     

Autonomous Navigation for Micro Aerial Vehicles in Complex GNSS-denied Environments

Micro aerial vehicles, such as multirotors, are particular well suited for the autonomous monitoring, inspection, and surveillance of buildings, e.g., for maintenance in industrial plants. Key prerequisites for the fully autonomous operation of micro aerial vehicles in restricted environments are 3D mapping, real-time pose tracking, obstacle detection, and planning of collision-free trajectories. In this article, we propose a complete navigation system with a multimodal sensor setup for omnidirectional environment perception. Measurements of a 3D laser scanner are aggregated in egocentric local multiresolution grid maps. Local maps are registered and merged to allocentric maps in which the MAV localizes. For autonomous navigation, we generate trajectories in a multi-layered approach: from mission planning over global and local trajectory planning to reactive obstacle avoidance. We evaluate our approach in a GNSS-denied indoor environment where multiple collision hazards require reliable omnidirectional perception and quick navigation reactions.     

A 3D Collision Avoidance Strategy for UAVs in a Non-Cooperative Environment

This paper presents a feasible 3D collision avoidance approach for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The proposed strategy aims to achieve the desired relative bearing in the horizontal plane and relative elevation in the vertical plane so that the host aircraft is able to avoid collision with the intruder aircraft in 3D. The host aircraft will follow a desired trajectory in the collision avoidance course and resume the pre-arranged trajectory after collision is avoided. The approaching stopping condition is determined for the host aircraft to trigger an evasion maneuver to avoid collision in terms of measured heading. A switching controller is designed to achieve the spatial collision avoidance strategy. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach can effectively avoid spatial collision, making it suitable for integration into flight control systems of UAVs.     

基于改进蚁群优化算法的自动驾驶多车协同运动规划

当前面向多辆自动驾驶汽车的协同运动规划方法能有效保证运行车辆与障碍物及其他车辆之间避免发生碰撞并保持安全距离,但车辆间的在线协同与规划能力仍有待提升。为实现多辆自动驾驶汽车在运动过程中的协同控制,提出一种基于改进蚁群优化算法的多车在线协同规划方法。以空间协同与轨迹代价为优化目标,构造多目标优化函数,确保了多车行驶过程中的协同安全性与轨迹平滑性。将多目标优化函数引入蚁群优化算法的信息素更新过程中,根据自动驾驶车辆数量产生多个种群,使得种群之间相互独立的同时为每辆自动驾驶汽车规划可行路线。最终对蚁群优化算法中的挥发因子进行自适应调整,提升了算法全局搜索能力及收敛速度。实验结果表明,该方法能使多辆自动驾驶汽车在运动过程中保持协同控制并规划出无碰撞路线,相比于基于人工势场和模型预测的协同驾驶方法在复杂道路场景下车辆间的协同效果更好且适应性更强。     

Mobile robot path planning and tracking using simulated annealing and fuzzy logic control

This article describes the development and implementation of an automatic controller for path planning and navigation of an autonomous mobile robot using simulated annealing and fuzzy logic. The simulated annealing algorithm was used to obtain a collision-free optimal trajectory among fixed polygonal obstacles. C-space was used to represent the working space and B-spline curves were used to represent the trajectories. The trajectory tracking was performed with a fuzzy logic algorithm. A detailed explanation of the algorithm is given. The objectives of the control algorithm were to track the planned trajectory and to avoid collision with moving obstacles. Simulation and implementation results are shown. A Nomadic 200 mobile robot was used to perform the experiments.     

UAVs Mission Planning with Imposition of Flight Level through Fast Marching Square

Many proposed activities to be carried out by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in urban environments require a control over the altitude for different purposes. Energy saving and minimization of costs are some of these objectives. This work presents a method to impose a flight level in a mission planning carried out by a UAV in a 3D urban environment. The planning avoids all obstacles encountered in the environment and maintains a fixed flight level in the majority of the trajectory. The method used as planner is the Fast Marching Square (FM²) method, which includes two adjustment parameters. Depending on the values of these parameters, it is possible to introduce into the planning an altitude constraint, as well as to modify the smoothness of the trajectory and the safety margins from the obstacles. Several simulated experiments have been carried out in different situations obtaining very good results.     

Design and Hardware-in-the-Loop Integration of a UAV Microavionics System in a Manned–Unmanned Joint Airspace Flight Network Simulator

One of the challenges for manned-unmanned air vehicles flying in joint airspace is the need to develop customized but scalable algorithms and hardware that will allow safe and efficient operations. In this work, we present the design of a bus-backboned UAV microavionics system and the hardware-in-the-loop integration of this unit within a joint flight network simulator. The microavionics system is structured around the Controller Area Network and Ethernet bus data backbone. The system is designed to be cross-compatible across our experimental mini-helicopters, aircrafts and ground vehicles, and it is tailored to allow autonomous navigation and control for a variety of different research test cases. The expandable architecture allows not only scalability, but also flexibility to test manned-unmanned fleet cooperative algorithm designs at both hardware and software layer deployed on bus integrated flight management computers. The flight simulator is used for joint simulation of virtual manned and unmanned vehicles within a common airspace. This allows extensive hardware-in-the-loop testing capability of customized devices and algorithms in realistic test cases that require manned and unmanned vehicle coordinated flight trajectory planning.     

Collision-free Autonomous Navigation of A Small UAV Using Low-cost Sensors in GPS-denied Environments

This paper proposes a novel complete navigation system for autonomous flight of small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in GPS-denied environments. The hardware platform used to test the proposed algorithm is a small, custom-built UAV platform equipped with an onboard computer, RGB-D camera, 2D light detection and ranging (LiDAR), and altimeter. The error-state Kalman filter (ESKF) based on the dynamic model for low-cost IMU-driven systems is proposed, and visual odometry from the RGB-D camera and height measurement from the altimeter are fed into the measurement update process of the ESKF. The pose output of the ESKF is then integrated into the open-source simultaneous location and mapping (SLAM) algorithm for pose-graph optimization and loop closing. In addition, the computationally efficient collision-free path planning algorithm is proposed and verified through simulations. The software modules run onboard in real time with limited onboard computational capability. The indoor flight experiment demonstrates that the proposed system for small UAVs with low-cost devices can navigate without collision in fully autonomous missions while establishing accurate surrounding maps.

     

Dealing with midair collisions in dense collective aerial systems

The idea of creating collective aerial systems is appealing because several rather simple flying vehicles could join forces to cover a large area in little time in applications such as monitoring, mapping, search and rescue, or airborne communication relays. In most of these scenarios, a fleet of cooperating vehicles is dispatched to a confined airspace area and requested to fly close to a nominal altitude. Moreover, depending on the task each vehicle is assigned to, individual flight trajectories in this essentially two‐dimensional space may interfere, resulting in disastrous collisions. This paper begins by introducing a probabilistic model to predict the rate of midair collisions that would occur if nothing is done to prevent them. In a second step, a control strategy for midair collision avoidance is proposed, which is interesting because it requires only local communication and information about flight altitudes. The proposed strategy is systematically analyzed in theory and simulation as well as in experiments with five physical aerial vehicles. A significant reduction in collision rates can be achieved. Statistically, values close to zero are possible when the swarm's density is below an application‐dependent threshold. Such low collision rates warrant an acceptable level of confidence in collision‐free operation of a physical swarm. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Autonomous Formation Flight Test of Multi-Micro Aerial Vehicles

This paper presents an autonomous formation flight algorithm for micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) and its experiment results. We choose the leader–follower scheme for formation flight as it is more appropriate for tracking arbitrary maneuvering of the leader in a formation. The sensing of other vehicles in the formation is achieved by sharing the vehicles’ states using a high-speed peer-to-peer radio data link. The designed guidance law is combined with a PD controller for tracking heading, velocity and altitude commands. A series of test flights were performed to validate the proposed formation guidance law. The test result confirms that the proposed formation flight algorithm is feasible to yield satisfactory results.     

The Lateral Conflict Risk Assessment for Low-altitude Training Airspace Using Weakly Supervised Learning Method

The lateral conflict risk assessment of low-altitude training airspace strategic planning, which is based on the TSE errors has always been a difficult task for training flight research. In order to effectively evaluate the safety interval and lateral collision risk in training airspace, in this paper, TSE error performance using a weakly supervised learning method was modelled. First, the lateral probability density function of TSE is given by using a multidimensional random variable covariance matrix, and the risk model of a training flight lateral collision based on TSE error is established. The lateral conflict risk in specific training airspace is analyzed, and then the lateral collision model is built. Through the quantification of the risk probability of lateral collisions, the security level of a specific airspace is evaluated. The analysis of the examples shows that for normal training flight in a variety of 4D flight track data, the lateral collision risk in specific training airspace is 0.543744 × 10^-13, the conflict risk meets the requirement of safety target level of international civil aviation organization.     

Underactuated Flexible Aerial Manipulators: a New Framework for Optimal Trajectory Planning Under Constraints Induced by Complex Dynamics

The aerial manipulators (AMs) are a new class of unmanned aerial systems (UASs) that are created in response to the ever-increasing demand for autonomous object transportation and manipulation. Because of power supply restrictions, the load carrying capacity is limited and therefore it is necessary to reduce the overall weight of these UASs. The past works in the field of AMs consider the multi-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as the base and manipulators with rigid links as the interactive elements with the environment which are bulky and heavy. To overcome the issue, this paper introduces the AMs endowed with flexible manipulators, their dynamic modeling, a new method for trajectory planning and control algorithm such that the unfavorable effects of using flexible elements like vibrations are minimized. Due to lack of kinematic constraints and the presence of flexibility conditions, conventional methods of trajectory planning for ground wheeled-mobile manipulators (GWMMs) such as extended and augmented Jacobian matrix cannot be applied to AMs. The addition of flexibility to the manipulator increases underactuation degrees (UADs), the complexity of trajectory planning and control synthesis. Considering large deformation assumption for flexible links, the dynamic equations and their induced nonholonomic constraints are derived applying Lagrangian formulation. Then, these constraints with that part of equations of motion corresponding to the links flexibility are solved simultaneously in the context of an optimization algorithm resulting in optimized trajectories. Through simulation results, the proposed method of trajectory planning and vibration control of underactuated flexible AMs has been shown to be effective.     

禁飞区无人机预警算法研究

针对大量在空中无秩序飞行的无人机有可能会闯入飞机场等禁飞区的情况,为了避免发生空中交通安全事故,提出了一种无人机禁飞区预警算法。首先,该算法经过坐标变换将描述无人机位置点的GPS坐标转换成对应的平面坐标;接着,采用改进的最小二乘曲线拟合算法预测出无人机的飞行轨迹;然后,通过计算预测的飞行轨迹曲线在当前点的切线是否会与描述禁飞区的电子围栏相交,来判断无人机是否会进入禁飞区。同时,所有的无人机都会安装上飞行数据记录模块,来实时地为该算法提供无人机的飞行状态信息。最后,通过MATLAB仿真实验验证了该预警算法的可行性和有效性,表明该算法可以对禁飞区周围的无人机进行预警。     

动态环境下改进蚁群算法的多Agent路径规划

针对动态环境下的多Agent路径规划问题,提出了一种改进的蚁群算法与烟花算法相结合的动态路径规划方法。通过自适应信息素强度值及信息素缩减因子来加快算法的迭代速度,并利用烟花算法来解决路径规划过程中的死锁问题,避免陷入局部最优。在多Agent动态避碰过程中,根据动态障碍物与多Agent之间的运行轨迹是否相交制定相应的避碰策略,并利用路径转变函数解决多Agent的正面碰撞问题。仿真实验表明,该方法优于经典蚁群算法,能够有效解决多Agent路径规划中的碰撞问题,从而快速找到最优无碰路径。     

Flying on point clouds: Online trajectory generation and autonomous navigation for quadrotors in cluttered environments

Micro aerial vehicles (MAVs), especially quadrotors, have been widely used in field applications, such as disaster response, field surveillance, and search‐and‐rescue. For accomplishing such missions in challenging environments, the capability of navigating with full autonomy while avoiding unexpected obstacles is the most crucial requirement. In this paper, we present a framework for online generating safe and dynamically feasible trajectories directly on the point cloud, which is the lowest‐level representation of range measurements and is applicable to different sensor types. We develop a quadrotor platform equipped with a three‐dimensional (3D) light detection and ranging (LiDAR) and an inertial measurement unit (IMU) for simultaneously estimating states of the vehicle and building point cloud maps of the environment. Based on the incrementally registered point clouds, we online generate and refine a flight corridor, which represents the free space that the trajectory of the quadrotor should lie in. We represent the trajectory as piecewise Bézier curves by using the Bernstein polynomial basis and formulate the trajectory generation problem as a convex program. By using Bézier curves, we can constrain the position and kinodynamics of the trajectory entirely within the flight corridor and given physical limits. The proposed approach is implemented to run onboard in real‐time and is integrated into an autonomous quadrotor platform. We demonstrate fully autonomous quadrotor flights in unknown, complex environments to validate the proposed method.