Target capturing in an ellipsoidal region with a swarm of quadrotor UAVs

Abstract

In a recent paper [1], we developed a target capturing strategy for swarms composed of double integrator agents. In this paper, we build on the results in [1] and focus on the implementation of the methodology for a swarm composed of quadrotor UAVs. We utilize both MATLAB and ROS environments under realistic conditions for that purpose. In ROS, we utilize Ultra-Violet LED blinkers based Ultra-Violet Direction And Ranging (UVDAR) system for relative localization. The sensing and localization errors serve as realistic errors for the assumptions in [1] for the uncertainties of the velocity and acceleration of the target. We verify in a realistic scenario that the agents converge to a user-defined ellipsoidal ring around the target despite the uncertainties and the more realistic agent dynamics.