Improving Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Formation Flight and Swarm Cohesion by Using Commercial Off the Shelf Sonar Sensors

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) formation flight and swarming are active areas of research within the Department of Defense (DoD). The current use of low cost commercial off the shelf (COTS) components to architect UAV formation flights results in insufficient position accuracy of the UAVs in the formation. This research aims to demonstrate the cohesiveness of formation flights increases by using onboard sonar sensors to accurately measure the distance the follower UAV is from the leader UAV. This research effort reduced the RMSD by 37.3 and the average position error by 70.9 when compared to previous flight test.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 23, 2017
Accession Number
AD1055240

Entities

People

  • Robert L. Mcclanahan

Organizations

  • Air Force Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Autonomy
  • Sensors

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Accuracy
  • Air Force
  • Aircrafts
  • Collision Avoidance
  • Computer Programs
  • Control Systems
  • Department Of Defense
  • Detection
  • Formation Flight
  • Global Positioning Systems
  • Governments
  • Graphical User Interface
  • Navigation
  • United States Government
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
  • Unmanned Systems
  • Unmanned Vehicles

Readers

  • Aerial Unmanned Vehicle Swarm Micro Periodontal Dentistry.
  • Sensor Fusion and Tracking Systems.
  • Software Engineering.

Technology Areas

  • Autonomy
  • Autonomy - Autonomous System Control