Development of an Outdoor Aerial Multi-Agent Robot Toolkit at the UF Autonomy Park

This paper presents the development of a software toolkit to support ground and aerial robotics at the University of Florida’s (UF) Autonomy Park, and the challenges that came with deploying multi-agent outdoor aerial robotics. The robots available to researchers at Autonomy Park include approximately 30 quadruped, wheeled and multirotor robots that need to communicate heterogeneously and run a variety of controllers. Hardware challenges included managing a fleet of aerial robots and relying on RTK-GPS (Real-Time Kinematic Global Positioning System) for precise localization outdoors. Software challenges primarily consisted of implementing Robot Operating System 2 (ROS2) on different unmanned platforms and mitigating environmental challenges in software. A simulation environment was developed to enable researchers to test controllers and structure programs that could be replicated onboard the robots. An autonomous herding experiment was implemented using the author’s software package and simulated results were demonstrated.