Flocking Navigation and Obstacle Avoidance for UAV Swarms Via Adaptive Risk Avoidance Willingness Mechanism

ABSTRACT A swarm of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has been widely used in both military and civilian fields due to its advantages of high cost‐effectiveness, high task efficiency and strong survivability. However, there are still challenges in flocking control of UAV swarms in complex environments with various obstacles. In this paper, we propose a flocking control and obstacle avoidance method for UAV swarms, which is called willingness control method (WCM). Specifically, we propose an adaptive risk avoidance willingness (ARAW) mechanism, in which each UAV has an ARAW coefficient representing its ARAW. As the distance from danger gets closer, the ARAW of the UAV to avoid danger increases. On this basis, an obstacle avoidance method for UAV swarms is designed, and an informed individual mechanism influenced by neighbour repulsion is introduced. By combining the hierarchical weighting Vicsek model (HWVEM), the UAV swarm system can simultaneously balance flocking navigation and obstacle avoidance tasks and adjust the priority of different tasks adaptively during the task process. Finally, under local communication constraints of the UAV, a series of simulation experiments as well as real‐word experiments with up to 12 UAVs are conducted to verify the security and compactness of the proposed method.