Robust collision avoidance for multiple micro aerial vehicles using nonlinear model predictive control

Abstract

When several Multirotor Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) share the same airspace, reliable and robust collision avoidance is required. In this paper we address the problem of multi-MAV reactive collision avoidance. We employ a model-based controller to simultaneously track a reference trajectory and avoid collisions. Moreover, to achieve a higher degree of robustness, our method also accounts for the uncertainty of the state estimator and of the position and velocity of the other agents. The proposed approach is decentralized, does not require a collision-free reference trajectory and accounts for the full MAV dynamics. We validated our approach in simulation and experimentally with two MAV.