Development of a low-cost Collision Avoidance System based on Coulomb’s inverse-square law for Multi-rotor Drones (UAVs)

A low-cost Obstacle Detection and Collision Avoidance (ODCA) System stimulated from Coulomb’s inverse-square law has been proposed, deployed, and tested on self-assembled multi-rotor system. The algorithm is focused to be inexpensive in terms of spacio-temporal complexities, cross platform, and able to run on low-cost, easily available hardware. It aims at protecting the drone from entering a complex situation in manual and autonomous flight modes. The ODCA system hardware design is focused to be easily integrable with various flight controllers. The hardware and communication interfacing among various modules required by the ODCA system have been briefly explained. Since, proposed ODCA system is tested on self-assembled drone, a small description about drone hardware, assembly, and communication mechanism is also provided. Furthermore, the ODCA system algorithm that processes sensor data in various stages and culminated actions are explained. Finally, the system is tested and evaluated in multi-obstacle scenario through hardware in the loop (HIL) simulation and their findings are shown.