Multi-Path Planning Method for UAVs Swarm Purposes

Abstract

Advances in the field of robotics have culminated in the cooperative and autonomous use of different types of vehicles, to efficiently tackle a wide range of tasks. One of the main elements, to allow the use of a collaborative and autonomous system of multiple vehicles, is the planning of safe routes, which the movement of different agents is guaranteed through the work area, without colliding with obstacles in the environment. Consequently, in this document, multiple path planning is proposed for a Multi-Robot System consisting of several Unmanned Aerial Vehicles; based on the creation of Probabilistic Roadmaps (PRM). The objective of this paper is the implementation of a multi-path planning method, for a Multi-Robot system, which must achieve different objectives in a set of proposed situations and the demonstration that the development of Probabilistic Roadmaps constitute an optimal and effective solution for multi-path problem solving. In addition, this solution is integrated in a Robot Operating System (ROS) architecture that provides simple implementation of the algorithms presented in a real fleet of vehicles. Finally, the results obtained show that methods based on PRM create optimal solutions in terms of computing time in swarms of scalable agents and for different situations analyzed, along with the possible integration in a versatile framework such as ROS.