Cooperative Planning Method for Swarm UAVs Based on Hierarchical Strategy

Dong Shiyou
College of Astronautics
Northwestern Polytechnical University,
Xian, China
e-mail: dsywin@sina.com
Zhu Xiaoping
Research Institute 365
Northwestern Polytechnical University,
Xian, China
e-mail: zhouzhou@nwpu.edu.cn
Long Guoqing
College of Astronautics
Northwestern Polytechnical University,
Xian, China
e-mail: ndlong@163.com
AbstractIn this paper, the problem of controlling swarm
UAVs is studied by considering a hierarchical strategy based
on the local interactions. First swarm as a whole plans its own
initial path using Voronoi graph and Dijkstra algorithm.
Second swarm UAVs combine the low-level behaviors to yield
swarm behaviors. The results achieved for such a strategy are
verified by computer simulations.
Keywords- Swarm UAVs, Cooperative Planning,
Hierarchical Strategy;
I. INTRODUCTION
In recent years, the attention of researchers was attracted
by the idea of creating groups of agents able to collaborate
to accomplish predefined tasks at the same time. Many
approaches were inspired by the observation of natural
systems. In nature, it is possible to see social animals
working together to perform complex social behaviors.
Many examples can be found in the sea, on the ground and
in the air. Ants can work together to build enormous nests;
birds can fly in formations during migrations in order to
save energy; fishes organize themselves in schools to
protect from enemies. A systems behavior emerges from
the local interactions. This behavior is self-organizing,
being adaptive, completely decentralized.
Researchers have begun to model swarms to better
understand how social animals interact and achieve goals.
So there is a new research field that named swarm UAVs.
Swarm UAVs have many applications such as exploration,
surveillance, attack, mapping of unknown environments.
Swarm UAVs can present many advantages such as
improving the mission efficiency and quality, achieving
flexibility to the tasks execution. Decentralized approaches
adapt to the cooperative control of a group of UAVs. It can
reduce the dimensionality of the problem. The number of
UAVs can be very large, ranging from hundreds to
thousands. In [1], social potential approach was used to
modeling swarm aggregation and cohesion. In [2], Olfati-
Saber used structure potential function to achieve collision-
free, distributed formation stabilization of autonomous
swarms. Similar results can be found in [3], where structure
potential are constructed by introduce virtual leader. In [4],
behavior-based approach is another important method to
form swarm behavior of creatures. In [5], Wang studied the
leader/follower approach for formations keeping and
attitude alignment based on nearest neighbor tracking.
The article use top-down control mechanism using
hierarchical strategy. By this architecture, self organization
is achieved using coordinated movements, while the
individual behavior is affected via top-down control, which
guides the system-wide behavior. The paper is organized as
follows: Section 2 presents the generation of initial path of
swarm using Voronoi graph and Dijkstra algorithm. Section
3 describes basic behaviors of UAVs. In section 4, relevant
simulation results are presented. Finally the main conclusion
and further research directions are outlined in section 5.
II. INITIAL SWARM PATH GENERATION
The dissertation incorporates top-down control to self-
organizing UAVs, thereby guiding the self-organizing
process and making it possible to undertake problem solving
directed by goal-oriented behavior. Initially swarm as a
whole plans its own original optimal or sub-optimal paths
using Voronoi graph and Dijkstra algorithm. Each Voronoi
cell contains one threat and every position within a given
cell is closer to its associated threat than to any other threats.
By using threat locations, the Voronoi polygon edges form a
initial path. The initial and target locations are contained
within cells.
A. Voronoi Tessellations
A Voronoi tessellation refers to a region, containing p
generating points, separated into cells where each cell
contains one generating point and every point in the cell is
closest to its generating point. Voronoi tessellations are
mathematically defined as follows.
Given a region
N
R e O , and a set of generating
points{ } O c
=
k
i i
p
1
, let the Voronoi cell
i
V corresponding to
the generator
i
p be
{ }
, ,..., 1
, ,..., 1 |
k i
i j k j p q p q q V
j i i
=
= = < O e =
(1)
where the set of Voronoi cells { }
k
i i
V
1 =
creates a Voronoi
tessellation on O .While the Euclidean norm is defined as
2 2
2 2
2
1 1
) ( ... ) ( ) (
iN N i i i
p q p q p q p q + + + = (2)
Equation (1) simply compares the distance between
points on the region, q , and generators, p . If a point q is
closest to the generator
i
p ; then that point belongs to the
Voronoi cell
i
V . In this problem, the point
i
p is treated as
978-1-4673-0915-8/12/$31.00 2012 IEEE
2012 3rd International Conference on System Science, Engineering Design and Manufacturing Informatization
304
threat locations. Then, the edges of the cells can be the best
path to follow avoiding the site of two nearest threats
Figure 1. Voronoi diagram
Now we have to search the shortest and safest path to go
to the nearest node to the target positions. Before this work,
the costs of each Voronoi edge should be decided. The total
cost of each edge consists of both length and exposure cost.
B. Cost Function (Evaluation function of trajectory
planning )
Using the threat points as mother points, we can obtain a
Voronoi graph. Furthermore, a directed graph can be easily
generated by connecting each of the starting points and
target points to their three closest nodes respectively in the
diagram. To avoid the threat regions and save fuel and time,
it is required to construct an optimal path to the target. The
total cost consists of two terms, first term is associated with
length cost and second one is the exposure cost. The
algorithm will search for two costs: fuels cost and threats
cost.
The threats cost means the degree that the threats pose to
UAVs. Here we suppose that the degree is only related to
the distance between UAV and threat point, and is
proportional to the inverse of the quadratic distance when
flying along the edge of the diagram. In this paper we
calculate the threats cost at the segment points 1/6, 1/2, and
5/6 on the edge of the graph and the overall threats cost
relating to one edge is given by
dt t d J
t
i threat
) ( / 1
0
4
, }
= (3)
_ + + =
=
N
j
j i j i j i
i i threat
d d d
L J
1
4
, , 6 / 5
4
, , 2 / 1
4
, , 6 / 1
,
)
1 1 1
( (4)
Where
i threat
J
,
is the threat cost when UAV flying on the
ith edge,
i
L is the length of the ith edge, N is the total
number of the threat points.
j-1
j
j+1
1/6
1/2
5/6
1/6
1/2
5/6
1/6
1/2
5/6
d
5/6,i-1,j-1
d
1/2,i,j
d
1/6,i+1,j+1
i-1
i
i+1
Figure 2. Threats cost evaluation points of trajectory planning
Suppose that all the UAVs fly at a constant speed. The
fuel required for flying over an edge of the Voronoi diagram
is therefore proportional to the length of the edge. We may
simply define the fuel cost for edge
i
L as
i i fuel
L J =
,
(5)
and accordingly the total cost for flying along an edge is
1 0 ) 1 (
, ,
s s + = k J k kJ J
i fuel i threat i
(6)
Using Dijkstras algorithm, we can search for the
Voronoi directed diagram, and determine a path for every
UAV, which has the minimal cost from its starting point to
the target point. The initial path is 1-2-3-4-5-6.
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-100
-80
-60
-40
-20
0
20
40
60
80
100
target
swarm uavs
1
2
3
4
5
6
Figure 3. The initial positions of the swarm UAVs
III. ELEMENTARY BEHAVIORS OF SWARM UAVS
Behavior-based cooperative control techniques are
ethologically motivated and have solved foraging, task
allocation, and division of labor problems. Possible
behaviors include neighbor tracking, collision and obstacle
avoidance, and formation keeping. The whole behavior is
decomposed into elementary behaviors. In presence of
multiple behaviors, each output is designed to achieve its
specific goal but it is generally impossible that a single
command can accomplish all the assigned behaviors at the
same time.
The first and for some aspects the breakthrough work on
the flocking theory, is the paper presented in 1987 by C.
Reynolds. In this section flocking theory is applied to Swarm
UAVs. The elementary behaviors are collision avoidance,
velocity matching, and flock centering. Collision avoidance
is to find the agents that are within the neighborhood and
sum up the vectors to push it away from them. Velocity
matching is to match the velocity of the agents in the
neighborhood. This will lower the possibility of the agents
colliding with each other. Velocity matching is seen as a
dynamic version of collision avoidance. Flocking centering
is to find the graphical center of the agents in the
neighborhood and to steer the agents to that point. Path
following behavior enables a character to steer along a
predetermined path, such as a roadway, corridor or tunnel.
This is distinct from constraining a vehicle rigidly to a path
like a train rolling along a track. The goal of the path
following steering behavior is to move a character along the
path while staying within the specified radius of the spine. If
305
the character is initially far away from the path, it must first
approach, then follow the path.
Collision Avoidance Velocity Matching Flock Centering
Path following
Figure 4. Elementary behaviors
The behaviors for flocking are modified to be used for
convenience. Each UAV describe the individual maneuvers
based on its neighbors. Collision avoidance and flock
centering can be combined to a behavior named neighbor
behavior which can keep desired distance from neighbors
when there are no obstacles.
Here, we assume the sense range of UAV is larger than
the desired distance d . For simplicity, we assume all
obstacles are closed discs. The set of neighbors for
UAVi can be described as:
} ,.... 3 , 2 , 1 , , { = < = j i r q q R NB
j i j i
(7)
where
j i
q q means the distance between
i
q and
j
q , r is
the sense radius.
For UAV, the neighbor behavior can be computed as
follows:
1
) (
+

_

=
e
i
i j
NB j
i j
i j i
neighbbor
N
d q q
q q
q q
V
i
(8)
That is because the algorithm is distributed, and every
UAV moves to the target using the same algorithm. When
the number of a UAVs neighbors is larger than one, the sum
of movement vectors between the UAV and its neighbors
will be computed. When the distance between two UAVs is
larger than the desired distance d , the UAVs will move
toward each other; otherwise, when the distance between
them is smaller than d , they will move away from each
other until they achieve the desired distance.
When there are threats in the environment, UAV will
adjust the movement vector based on threats. We assume
threats have the safety margin l , if the distance between
UAVs and threats is larger than l , then there is no force on a
UAV; otherwise there will be a repulsive force on a UAV in
order to avoid threats.
} {
i k
threat Ni k
i k
i k i
threat
q T l sat
q T
q T
V
i

=
_
e
(9)
Where
k
T is threat centre. The closer a UAV is to an
threat (
i k
q T is smaller), the larger the repulsive force will
become (
i k
q T l becomes larger).
Swarm UAVs fly to the target to achieve mission, so
there is a migration vector to control all UAVs. The target is
on the initial swarm path.
et t i
et t i i
migration
q q
q q
v V
arg
arg

= (10)
Where v denote the migration velocity.
Once each of the rules has been calculated, they are
combined to produce a single steering force that defines the
acceleration of the UAVs. In this most simple model, the
rules are scaled and added together.
Figure 5. The flow diagram of hierarchical strategy
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS
In this section, simulation results are shown to illustrate
the effectiveness of the algorithms discussed in the
proceeding section. Consider ten UAVs, which are initially
located at U1 (-50,-80), U2(-93,-80), U3(-70,-75), U4(-95,-95)
U5(-82,-90), U6(-84,-75), U7(-90,-65), U8(-78,-70), U9(-90,-
90), U10(-77,-80). There are ten threat points located at T1(-
50,-80), T2 (-75,-10), T3(-60,50), T4 (-25,-40), T5(-30,20), T6(-
5,60), T7 (25,-70), T8 (25,0), T9(60,-40), T10(50,50) with radius
15, 10, 15, 10, 10, 15, 10, 10, 15, 15. Targets value is set as
(90, 10). Here, figure 6 is a snapshot at a specific time. The
UAVs try to achieve the desired distance from their
neighbors and move forward. With time passing, the UAVs
adjust their movement vectors to avoid collision with
neighbors and threats. The swarm UAVs try to achieve the
path following.
306
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-100
-80
-60
-40
-20
0
20
40
60
80
100
target
1
2
3
4 5
6
(a) Position snapshot at 5.4 s.
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-100
-80
-60
-40
-20
0
20
40
60
80
100
target
1
2 3
4 5
6
(b) Position snapshot at 9.7 s
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-100
-80
-60
-40
-20
0
20
40
60
80
100
target
1
2 3
4 5
6
(c) Position snapshot at 14.6 s.
Figure 6. UAVs move together to avoid threats and others
V. CONCLUSIONS
The dissertation incorporates top-down control to self-
organizing UAVs, guiding the self-organizing process to the
goal. First swarm as a whole plans its own initial, optimal or
sub-optimal path using Voronoi graph and Dijkstra algorithm.
Second swarm UAVs combine the low-level behaviors
(basic, individual, and group) necessary to yield a swarm
behaviors. The primary strengths of this method are: 1) the
ability to that are easy to model or understand at a global
level based only on an understanding of the individual
elements; and 2) the decentralized approaches are flexible,
scalable, robust and cost-effective.
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