Decentralised Deconfliction of Aerial Robots in High Intensity Traffic
Structures
Abstract
Projections for future air mobility envisage intensely utilised airspace
that does not simply scale up from existing systems with centralised air
traffic control. This paper considers the implementation and test of a
software and hardware framework for decentralised control of aerial
vehicles within intensely used airspace. Up to 10 rotary wing vehicles
of maximum all up mass of 1 kg are flown in an outdoor volume
with length scale of 100 m with GPS and WiFi connectivity. Flight
control is implemented using a Pixhawk 4 flight controller running the
PX4 firmware with guidance algorithms run on a separate onboard
companion computer. Deconfliction is implemented using a simple elastic
repulsion model with a guidance update rate of 10 Hz. Traffic
structures are constructed from a path of directed waypoints and
associated cross sectional geometry. Junctions are implemented when two
paths converge into one or when one path diverges into two. Agents
engage with structures through execution of flow, merge and swirl
velocity rules. Calibration experiments showed that the worst case
latency in agents sharing position information was of the order of 0
.5 s made up from delays due to finite guidance update
rate, WiFi processing and centralised message processing. A choice of
vehicle cruise speed of 2 m/s and conflict radius of 2 .5
m provided an acceptable compromise between experiment time
efficiency (speed) and spatial efficiency (resolution) within the test
volume. Results from recirculating junction experiments show that peak
deconfliction activity occurs at the junction node, however biased
distribution of agents within a corridor means the peak intensity is
pushed ahead of the node. Use of meshed helical junction structures
significantly reduces the intensity of conflict at the expense of
reduced junction time efficiency.