A Hierarchical Approach to Control a Swarm of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

In this paper, the problem of controlling a mission of multiple UAVs is studied by considering a swarming hierarchy that relies on a switching mechanism and is based on a combination of the local interactions that the agents have with each other. An analytical model of a point mass UAV in a 2D environment is used to represent the family of mobile agents and to properly combine the low-level behaviors (basic, individual, and group) necessary to yield a family of feasible solutions. The results achieved for such a switching mechanism are verified by computer simulations and suggest that the hierarchical control approach can be used and eventually applied to actual UAVs