Algorithm Prevents Midair Drone Collisions

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When multiple drones are working together in the same airspace there’s a risk, they might crash into each other.

To help avoid these costly crashes, MIT researchers presented a system called MADER. This multiagent trajectory-planner enables a group of drones to formulate optimal, collision-free trajectories. Each agent broadcasts its trajectory so fellow drones know where it is planning to go. Agents then consider each other’s trajectories when optimizing their own to ensure they don’t collide.

But when the team tested the system on real drones, they found that if a drone doesn’t have up-to-date information on the trajectories of its partners, it might inadvertently select a path that results in a collision.

The researchers revamped their system and are now rolling out Robust MADER, a multiagent trajectory planner that generates collision-free trajectories even when communications between agents are delayed.

“MADER worked great in simulations, but it hadn’t been tested in hardware. So, we built a bunch of drones and started flying them. The drones need to talk to each other to share trajectories, but once you start flying, you realize pretty quickly that there are always communication delays that introduce some failures,” says Kota Kondo, an aeronautics and astronautics graduate student.

When Kondo and his collaborators tested Robust MADER, both in simulations and flight experiments with real drones, it achieved a 100 percent success rate at generating collision-free trajectories. While the drones’ travel time was a bit slower than it would be with some other approaches, no other baselines could guarantee safety.

As reported by techxplore.com.