Development of a comprehensive software system for implementing cooperative control of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles

Abstract

In this work, we focus on establishing a framework and developing a comprehensive software platform, which is capable of realizing the cooperative control for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). An efficient and flexible framework is adopted for cooperative control law design, on which we build up a software platform consisting of an onboard real-time software system for UAVs and a ground control station (GCS). Such a platform employs a distributed architecture to facilitate task deployment, efficient monitoring and commanding the UAVs via the ground station. Hardware-in-the-loop simulation and practical cooperative flight experiments have been conducted to verify the efficiency of the overall software system.