Experimental evaluation of an event-based collision avoidance method with application to quadrotors

This paper evaluates a method for collision avoidance of quadrotors in experiments. The method for the event-based collision-free control of moving objects has been described in recent publications. The quadrotors are controlled locally and connected by a communication network in a leader-follower structure. Communication is only invoked at event times that indicate the risk of a collision between the quadrotors. The leader is able to plan its trajectory freely, while the follower has to guarantee the collision-free movement with respect to the leader. For this, the follower is provided with a unit that estimates the future movement of the leader and changes the follower trajectory if necessary. The implementation of the method in a test bed is described and the effectiveness of the method is demonstrated by experiments with two quadrotors.