Self-Organized UAV Flocking Based Only on Relative Range and Bearing

Abstract

In this work, we address the problem of convergence and cohesiveness of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flocking. Thus, we propose a proximal control-based method for UAV self-organized flocking. Our method efficiently achieves flocking in the absence of alignment control and moves into an arbitrary direction without any direction control or informed robots. Robots use a Lennard-Jones potential function to maintain the cohesiveness of the flocking while avoiding collision within the teammates. We evaluate our approach using the order metric, the steady-state value, and the settling time that can be used as a cohesiveness indicator.