Simulating unmanned aerial vehicle swarms with the UB-ANC Emulator. (March 2019)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- Simulating unmanned aerial vehicle swarms with the UB-ANC Emulator. (March 2019)
- Main Title:
- Simulating unmanned aerial vehicle swarms with the UB-ANC Emulator
- Authors:
- Modares, Jalil
Mastronarde, Nicholas
Dantu, Karthik - Abstract:
- Recent advances in multi-rotor vehicle control and miniaturization of hardware, sensing, and battery technologies have enabled cheap, practical design of micro air vehicles for civilian and hobby applications. In parallel, several applications are being envisioned that bring together a swarm of multiple networked micro air vehicles to accomplish large tasks in coordination. However, it is still very challenging to deploy multiple micro air vehicles concurrently. To address this challenge, we have developed an open software/hardware platform called the University at Buffalo's Airborne Networking and Communications Testbed (UB-ANC), and an associated emulation framework called the UB-ANC Emulator. In this paper, we present the UB-ANC Emulator, which combines multi-micro air vehicle planning and control with high-fidelity network simulation, enables practitioners to design micro air vehicle swarm applications in software and provides seamless transition to deployment on actual hardware. We demonstrate the UB-ANC Emulator's accuracy against experimental data collected in two mission scenarios: a simple mission with three networked micro air vehicles and a sophisticated coverage path planning mission with a single micro air vehicle. To accurately reflect the performance of a micro air vehicle swarm where communication links are subject to interference and packet losses, and protocols at the data link, network, and transport layers affect network throughput, latency, andRecent advances in multi-rotor vehicle control and miniaturization of hardware, sensing, and battery technologies have enabled cheap, practical design of micro air vehicles for civilian and hobby applications. In parallel, several applications are being envisioned that bring together a swarm of multiple networked micro air vehicles to accomplish large tasks in coordination. However, it is still very challenging to deploy multiple micro air vehicles concurrently. To address this challenge, we have developed an open software/hardware platform called the University at Buffalo's Airborne Networking and Communications Testbed (UB-ANC), and an associated emulation framework called the UB-ANC Emulator. In this paper, we present the UB-ANC Emulator, which combines multi-micro air vehicle planning and control with high-fidelity network simulation, enables practitioners to design micro air vehicle swarm applications in software and provides seamless transition to deployment on actual hardware. We demonstrate the UB-ANC Emulator's accuracy against experimental data collected in two mission scenarios: a simple mission with three networked micro air vehicles and a sophisticated coverage path planning mission with a single micro air vehicle. To accurately reflect the performance of a micro air vehicle swarm where communication links are subject to interference and packet losses, and protocols at the data link, network, and transport layers affect network throughput, latency, and reliability, we integrate the open-source discrete-event network simulator ns-3 into the UB-ANC Emulator. We demonstrate through node-to-node and end-to-end measurements how the UB-ANC Emulator can be used to simulate multiple networked micro air vehicles with accurate modeling of mobility, control, wireless channel characteristics, and network protocols defined in ns-3. … (more)
- Is Part Of:
- International journal of micro air vehicles. Volume 11(2019)
- Journal:
- International journal of micro air vehicles
- Issue:
- Volume 11(2019)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 11, Issue 2019 (2019)
- Year:
- 2019
- Volume:
- 11
- Issue:
- 2019
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2019-0011-2019-0000
- Page Start:
- Page End:
- Publication Date:
- 2019-03
- Subjects:
- Unmanned aerial vehicle swarms -- multi-agent planning and control -- wireless networks -- emulation -- ns-3 -- MAVLink
Aerosonde (Drone aircraft) -- Periodicals
Aerospace engineering -- Periodicals
Aerosonde (Drone aircraft)
Aerospace engineering
Periodicals
623.746905 - Journal URLs:
- http://mav.sagepub.com/ ↗
http://www.multi-science.co.uk/ijmav.htm ↗
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/mscp/ijmav ↗
http://www.multi-science.co.uk/ ↗ - DOI:
- 10.1177/1756829319837668 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 1756-8293
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 12705.xml