Persistent surveillance for a swarm of micro aerial vehicles by flocking algorithm

Persistent surveillance is a major role envisioned for autonomous unmanned vehicles. The mission of persistent surveillance requires the vehicles to continuously survey a target region. This paper investigates the techniques of persistent surveillance control for a swarm of micro aerial vehicles. We present a flocking algorithm to drive the micro aerial vehicles flying in a coordinate formation with a capability of obstacle avoidance. We propose a new digital pheromone mechanism to control and coordinate the swarms of micro aerial vehicles to search a field of interest and to reduce the uncertainty of every region in the field over time. Simulation results show the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm in generating collision-free persistent surveillance trajectories for a swarm of micro aerial vehicles in a coordinated manner.