Abstract
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are gaining increasing interest thanks to their flexibility and versatility. However, these systems are very complex and a good simulation platform is needed. In this paper, a new Framework for simulation and fast prototyping of UAV control laws is presented. The Framework exploits the high realism of the simulations carried out in a three-dimensional virtual environment with the easiness of use of development systems such as Matlab® for fast prototyping of control systems. Then a novel method that exploits the benefits of Model Predictive Control (MPC) for cooperative scenarios is introduced. The obtained results show good performances of MPC in solving the formation problem of unmanned aerial vehicles; finding an optimal solution and taking into account different constraints. The developed framework allows also to easily change from simulated agent to real one.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Player Stage Gazebo. http://playerstage.sourceforge.net/
Flightgear. http://www.flightgear.org/
Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio. http://www.microsoft.com/robotics/
Simplysim Simplycube. http://www.simplysim.net/
Physx. http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx-9.10.0513-driver.html
X-plane. http://www.x-plane.com
Mancini, A., Cesetti, A., Iualé, A., Frontoni, E., Zingaretti, P., Longhi, S.: A framework for simulation and testing of uavs in cooperative scenarios. J. Intell. Robot. Syst. 54, 307–329 (2009). doi:10.1007/s10846-008-9268-8
Frontoni, E., Mancini, A., Caponetti, F., Zingaretti, P.: A framework for simulations and tests of mobile robotics tasks. In: 14th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation, pp. 1–6 (2006)
Pnet. http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/345
Sujit, P.B., George, J.M., Beard, R.W.: Multiple UAV coalition formation. In: American Control Conference 2008, pp. 2010–2015 (2008)
Yang, Z.J., Qi, X.H., Shan, G.L.: Simulation of flight control laws design using model predictive controllers. In: International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation, 2009. ICMA 2009, pp. 4213–4218 (2009)
Vaccarini, M., Longhi, S., Katebi, R.: State space stability analysis of unconstrained decentralized model predictive control systems. In: American Control Conference, 2006, p. 6 (2006)
Lawton, J.R.T., Beard, R.W., Young, B.J.: A decentralized approach to formation maneuvers. IEEE Trans. Robot. Autom. 19(6), 933–941 (2003)
Xiaorui, Xi., Abed, E.H.: Formation control with virtual leaders and reduced communications. In: 44th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 2005 and 2005 European Control Conference. CDC-ECC ’05, pp. 1854–1860 (2005)
Ihle, I.-A.F., Jouffroy, J., Fossen, T.I.: Formation control of marine surface craft using lagrange multipliers. In: 44th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 2005 and 2005 European Control Conference, pp. 752–758 (2005)
Dimarogonas, D.V., Kyriakopoulos, K.J.: Formation control and collision avoidance for multi-agent systems and a connection between formation infeasibility and flocking behavior. In: 44th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 2005 and 2005 European Control Conference. CDC-ECC ’05, pp. 84–89 (2005)
Dimarogonas, D.V., Kyriakopoulos, K.J.: On the state agreement problem for multiple unicycles. In: American Control Conference, 2006, p. 6 (2006)
Vaccarini, M., Longhi, S., Katebi, M.R.: Unconstrained networked decentralized model predictive control. J. Process Control 19(2), 328–339 (2009)
Dunbar, W.B., Murray, R.M.: Distributed receding horizon control for multi-vehicle formation stabilization. Automatica 42, 549–558 (2006)
Longhi, S., Monteriù, A., Vaccarini, M.: Cooperative Control of Underwater Glider Fleets by Fault Tolerant Decentralized MPC. In: 17th IFAC World Congress, pp. 16021–16026. Seoul, Korea (2008)
Vaccarini, M., Longhi, S.: Formation control of marine vehicles via real-time networked decentralized MPC. In: 17th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation, 2009. MED ’09, pp. 428–433 (2009)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Benini, A., Mancini, A., Minutolo, R. et al. A Modular Framework for Fast Prototyping of Cooperative Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. J Intell Robot Syst 65, 507–520 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-011-9577-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-011-9577-1