A distributed swarm control for an agricultural multiple unmanned aerial vehicle system

In this study, we propose a distributed swarm control algorithm for an agricultural multiple unmanned aerial vehicle system that enables a single operator to remotely control a multi-unmanned aerial vehicle system. The system has two control layers that consist of a teleoperation layer through which the operator inputs teleoperation commands via a haptic device and an unmanned aerial vehicle control layer through which the motion of unmanned aerial vehicles is controlled by a distributed swarm control algorithm. In the teleoperation layer, the operator controls the desired velocity of the unmanned aerial vehicle by manipulating the haptic device and simultaneously receives the haptic feedback. In the unmanned aerial vehicle control layer, the distributed swarm control consists of the following three control inputs: (1) velocity control of the unmanned aerial vehicle by a teleoperation command, (2) formation control to obtain the desired formation, and (3) collision avoidance control to avoid obstacles. The three controls are input to each unmanned aerial vehicle for the distributed system. The proposed algorithm is implemented in the dynamic simulator using robot operating system and Gazebo, and experimental results using four quadrotor-type unmanned aerial vehicles are presented to evaluate and verify the algorithm.