A simulation environment for analyzing cooperative approaches in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle swarms

The object of this thesis work is the implementation of a multi-robot environment for modelling and simulation of cooperative approaches in scenarios comprising UAV swarms. First, the ROS/Gazebo base simulation environment has been extended with the possibility of simulating co-operative UAVs. Then, a case study has been developed, where quadcopters are deployed and perform space coverage operations by applying a slightly modified version of a representative consensus protocol. Finally, the multi-robot environment has been enhanced exploiting a co-simulation approach. This further extension shows greater modularity and flexibility in the development phase, greater exploitation of the principle of code reuse, together with the possibility of interfacing between different modeling software or simulation tools. Results on the analysis of the consensus algorithm are shown in both simulation and co-simulation scenarios