Collision Avoidance for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles based on Safety Radius of the Formation Geometry

In this paper, we propose a geometry-based collision avoidance method for unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs) in formation flight. The leader-follower method was used for formation flight, and the geometry-based Closest Point of Approach (CPA) method was used for the collision avoidance. The safety radius was considered by deriving a circumscribed circle that includes the whole of the safety radius of the UAVs in the formation. The collision avoidance command was generated after calculating the closest point of approach from the intruder based on the center of the circle. The leader avoids collision as considering followers and also followers avoid collision by just following the leader. The proposed method was verified performance of formation flight and collision avoidance through numerical simulation.

1. INTRODUCTION

Formation flight techniques and cooperative operation of multiple UAVs can be considered to improve the mission capability than that of a single UAV. Unlike single UAV operation, there are some things to consider when using UAVs for formation flights. Considerations include control methods for UAVs, formation control algorithms and position control algorithms. In addition, collision avoidance algorithms during formation flight are required for efficient operation.