📝 SummarXiv

Abstract

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 that each robot reaches its goal region in a finite time, avoiding collisions with obstacles and other robots without exceeding a desired maximum distance from a predefined set of neighbors (flocking or proximity constraint). The proposed approach allows to operate in crowded scenarios and to deal with tracking errors and on-board sensing errors, without violating safety and proximity constraints. 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.