Distributed Detect-and-Avoid with Non-Stationary Obstacles

Abstract

Detect-and-avoid is a crucial challenge in the autonomous navigation of single or multiple agent systems. For safe and reliable autonomous navigation in unknown and dynamic environments, obstacles should be sensed using onboard sensors and the trajectory should be adjusted accordingly. Additional challenge is introduced in the case of multi-agent systems, where the adjusted trajectory could introduce collisions between agents, for example in satellite swarms in Low Earth Orbits (LEO). The increasing amount of occupancy of the low orbit and the presence of space debris gives high risk of damaging satellites due to collisions. With communication between nearby satellites, cooperative methods enable the avoidance of collisions with dynamic obstacles while simultaneously finding an optimal trajectory of the cooperative agents. Drone swarms equipped in industrial settings encounter the challenge of navigating through a dynamic environments in a similar way. The dynamic obstacles are now other autonomous systems as well as humans, performing tasks simultaneously.