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Autonomous control for unmanned aerial vehicle swarms based on biological collective behaviors

  • DUAN Haibin ,
  • LI Pei
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  • School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University; Science and Technology on Aircraft Control Laboratory, Beijing 100083, China

Received date: 2016-11-25

  Revised date: 2017-03-02

  Online published: 2017-04-18

Abstract

Through simple rules and local interactions, social groups exhibit robust, scalable and flexible global behaviors, which are useful for applications in engineering areas. In this paper, we first introduce collective behaviors of biological systems, such as colonies of ants, flocks of birds, colonies of bees and schools of fish,and summarize the properties of these social groups. Then we analyze the key techniques of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms, including mass UAV management and control, swarm perception and situation sharing, multiple UAV autonomous formation flight, and swarm cooperative decision making. Afterwards, we briefly sort the UAV swarms that take inspiration from the self-organized behaviors of social animals Finally, we outline open problems and possible research directions in collective motion.

Cite this article

DUAN Haibin , LI Pei . Autonomous control for unmanned aerial vehicle swarms based on biological collective behaviors[J]. Science & Technology Review, 2017 , 35(7) : 17 -25 . DOI: 10.3981/j.issn.1000-7857.2017.07.001

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