Collisionless Fast Pattern Formation Mechanism for Dynamic Number of UAVs

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is an emerging technology that assists in various automated activities where human involvement is minimal. Though individual UAVs are extremely useful entities, their productivity can further be increased by deploying multi-UAVs. Pattern formation among multi-UAVs is one of the key functionalities in a swarm environment that is essential for several UAV missions namely military expedition, search and rescue operations, drone based delivery mechanisms etc. In this paper, to facilitate pattern formation among UAVs in an effective manner, a Time-Interleaved Pattern Formation (TIPF) Mechanism is proposed. The existing systems work for a fixed number of drones whose pattern switching mechanisms are preprogrammed. However, the TIPF mechanism enables switching patterns among dynamic number of drones (UAVs) on the fly by inducing a small delay between each UAV movement. The TIPF mechanism avoids collision, which occurs due to the simultaneous movement of UAVs. The proposed TIPF mechanism encompasses a Centralised Coordinate Calculation (CCC) algorithm to easily calculate the coordinates of UAVs in a given pattern. Further, this mechanism has also been simulated and tested in our proposed virtual IP based Software In The Loop (V-SITL) environment. This proposed V-SITL environment offers increased scalability on account of the entire UAV system being simulated in a single computer. The TIPF mechanism has been simulated for 8 drones in a dynamic manner for square and triangle patterns. The simulation results show that the pattern formation time avoids collision in a time interleaving rate of 52.63%.