Downwash-Aware Trajectory Planning for Large Quadrotor Teams

2017/04/17 by James A. Preiss, Preiss, James A., Wolfgang Hönig +5 · 3 citations
Computer Science · #Distributed Control Multi-Agent Systems #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Optimization and Search Problems #Robotic Path Planning Algorithms #Robotics (cs.RO)

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1704.04852

openalex publication_date 2017/04/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We describe a method for formation-change trajectory planning for large quadrotor teams in obstacle-rich environments. Our method decomposes the planning problem into two stages: a discrete planner operating on a graph representation of the workspace, and a continuous refinement that converts the non-smooth graph plan into a set of C^k-continuous trajectories, locally optimizing an integral-squared-derivative cost. We account for the downwash effect, allowing safe flight in dense formations. We demonstrate the computational efficiency in simulation with up to 200 robots and the physical plausibility with an experiment with 32 nano-quadrotors. Our approach can compute safe and smooth trajectories for hundreds of quadrotors in dense environments with obstacles in a few minutes.

Cited by

• Memory-Efficient 2D/3D Shape Assembly of Robot Swarms
• Influence of Static and Dynamic Downwash Interactions on Multi-Quadrotor Systems
• Sphereabout: A Spherical Intersection Design for Networked Urban Air Mobility

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