Task priority approach to the coordinated control of a team of flying vehicles in the presence of obstacles

This study describes the application of the task priority null-space behavioural technique to the coordinated control of a team of flying vehicles with hovering capabilities, such as helicopters or quadrotors, in the presence of obstacles and no-fly zones. Once a flight mission is assigned to the team in terms of a target region to reach, each flying vehicle is required to accomplish four tasks with assigned priorities. Formation flight and collisions avoidance with other vehicles and unknown or moving obstacles tasks are formulated via analytical expressions as required by the classical null-space behavioural approach. Move to target and a priori known obstacle avoidance behaviours are obtained by solving a partial differential equation problem within the flight domain. The effectiveness of the proposed technique is discussed with regards to two-dimensional and three-dimensional numerical examples. © 2012 The Institution of Engineering and Technology.