2025/04/26 by Manuel Boldrer, Vít Krátký, Vit Kratky +6 · 1 voice
Computer Science · Engineering · #Distributed Control Multi-Agent Systems #Robotic Path Planning Algorithms #Robotics and Sensor-Based Localization #cs.RO
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2504.18840
openalex publication_date 2025/04/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In this letter, we present a distributed algorithm for flocking in complex environments that operates at constant altitude, without explicit communication, no a priori information about the environment, and by using only on-board sensing and computation capabilities. We provide sufficient conditions to guarantee collision avoidance with obstacles and other robots without exceeding a desired maximum distance from a predefined set of neighbors (flocking or proximity maintenance constraint) during the mission. The proposed approach allows to operate in crowded scenarios and to explicitly deal with tracking errors and on-board sensing errors. The algorithm was verified through simulations with varying number of UAVs and also through numerous real-world experiments in a dense forest involving up to four UAVs.