UAV-UGV cooperation for objects transportation in an industrial area

Abstract

We present in this paper a decentralized multirobot (aerial and ground) cooperation scheme for objects transportation. A team of ground mobile robots guided by a drone and a human operator moves in a coordinated way keeping a predefined formation in order to carry objects (tools, gas masks,…) in unsafe industrial areas. One ground mobile robot (leader) navigates among obstacles thanks to the waypoints provided by the drone and the human operator. The other ground mobile robots (followers) use a predictive vision based target tracking controller to keep a certain distance and bearing to the leader.