Three-Dimensional Repulsive Vector Field Strategy for Collision Avoidance in Quadrotors Trajectory Tracking

Unmanned aerial vehicles are now widely adopted in various applications, often requiring coexistence with other vehicles. This article proposes a repulsive vector field-based collision avoidance for quadrotors performing independent trajectory-tracking tasks in the same airspace. The trajectory tracking control is designed in the quadrotor’s attitude configuration space and utilizes the Immersion and Invariance technique to compensate for constant unknown disturbances; moreover, it operates with a collision avoidance strategy that is activated when a threshold distance between quadrotors is exceeded. The collision avoidance strategy is based on the direction of a three-dimensional repulsive vector field (RVF) constructed around each vehicle. The trajectory tracking and collision avoidance strategies are experimentally evaluated.