A distributed and modularised coordination framework for mission oriented fixed-wing UAV swarms

In this paper, a distributed and modularised coordination framework for mission oriented fixed-wing UAV swarms is proposed. The framework is fully distributed such that no central point is needed for coordination. Each UAV makes decision based on the information from the neighbors autonomously so as to achieve better scalability. Besides, the proposed framework is modularised into many modules with interfaces of inputs and outputs. Thus, the complexity of developing a large system can be reduced and different missions can be feasibly extended to the swarm system. Through field experiments with 21 fixed-wing UAVs, we evaluate the proposed framework and successfully demonstrate coordination missions such as formation flight, target recognition and tracking.