Abstract

Drones can do more complex tasks by combining them to a swarm. To cartograph the quality of an agriculture area in shorter time is even possible like a multispectral recording from different perspectives for one special point. This helps to detect fawns or crop dusting in field production. Moreover, can the agriculture open the door for rapid development of flying sensor nets. Before drone flights in swarm constellation can start, the constrains security, safety and even the higher efficiency must be validated to reduce risks for humans to a minimum. The system analysis contains all components and developed algorithms with special focus on collision avoidance are needed. Hardware-in-the-Loop-Simulations (HIL) provides the possibility to connect the virtual simulation environment with real hardware components of the complete developed drone swarm system. Like continuous integration systems in process of software development, it is possible to run prespecified routines for typical and critical situations in automated way. Solutions for two main challenges must be solved to prevent swarms again collisions. First area of interest is about relative localisation. Enhances with dimension of time distances and relative velocities are calculated. In combination with the motion prediction for the whole swarm and in contrast from each drone to all others within the swarm environment, curve intersection is identified. The second area describes reliable communication within all swarm entities and base station. High exchange rates of calculated and measured values, position data rises the potential for precise swarm coordination. In combination with consensus algorithms failure tolerance and knowledge about neighbours, swarm features are under deployment in redundant manner. Integrated into the HIL-System physical circumstances like very short distances, flight trajectories down to earth and high or low temperatures are simulated. At the end each aspect of the developed swarm system is proceeded to prepare real test flights reliable.