Outdoor flocking and formation flight with autonomous aerial robots

We present the first decentralized multi-copter flock that is capable of stable autonomous outdoor flight. By autonomous we mean that all members navigate themselves based on the dynamic information received from other robots in the vicinity, without any central data processing or control. Instead, all the necessary computations are carried out by miniature on-board computers. The only global information the system exploits is from GPS receivers, while the units use wireless modules to share this positional information with other flock members locally. Collective behavior is based on a decentralized control framework with bio-inspiration from statistical physical modelling of animal swarms. The model allows for stable group flight even in noisy, windy, delayed and error-prone environment. Using this framework we successfully demonstrated several fundamental collective flight tasks with up to 11 units: i) we achieved self-propelled flocking in a bounded area with self-organized object avoidance capabilities and ii) performed collective target tracking with stable formation flights (grid, rotating ring, straight line). With realistic numerical simulations we demonstrated that the local broadcast-type communication and the decentralized autonomous control method allows for the scalability of the model for larger flock sizes.