Onboard Trajectory Coordination of Multiple Unmanned Air Vehicles

The increasing diversity of autonomous air vehicles (AAVs) and their application has created an increased need for effective aircraft trajectory coordination within congested airspaces. Here, a method to coordinate a flight formation of multiple cooperative unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) using onboard command and control is introduced. The proposed system has been verified in simulation and validated in flight. The results show that it is possible to control a fleet of multi-rotor aircraft using onboard equipment. Areas of improvement to increase accuracy and reliability of the system are proposed.