Enhanced UAV coordination for collaborative aerial delivery and transportation

增强无人机协调，实现协作式空中交付和运输

• 批准号: 517954-2017
• 负责人: Sharf, Inna
• 金额: $ 1.82万
• 依托单位: McGill University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Engage Grants Program
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2017-01-01 至 2018-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=639577
• 关键词: Enhanced; UAV; coordination; collaborative; aerial

Humanitas Solutions is a Montreal-based company focusing on the development of innovative strategies foremergency and disaster assistance applications. As we recently witnessed with hurricane Irma, a natural orman-made disaster can leave behind destruction and debris of massive proportions, terrains that cannot benavigated and large areas without any functioning infrastructure. In such a scenario, the use of a fleet orpossibly several fleets of small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) flying over the area can provide valuableinformation to first responders, and for assistance over intermediate term. Some specific tasks that can becarried out by a UAV fleet include surveillance and information gathering, reconstruction of the map of theaffected area for planning and managing the assistance, provision of aerial communication nodes to allowcommunication between the parties involved in the response operations, and transport of emergency suppliesand equipment. It is the latter that will be the focus of the joint project between McGill and Humanitas, asproposed in this application. Given the rather limited payload capacity of a single drone, typically on the orderof 1 kg, the task of transporting a heavier payload using several drones will be investigated in this project. In adisaster scenario, the payload may represent emergency medical and survival supplies or a piece of specializedequipment that can be shared between different aid groups. In particular, we will work towards demonstratingcollaborative transport and delivery of a large payload using four multi-rotor UAVs. As part of this work, wewill address a range of issues related to coordinated control and path planning for the drones, collisionavoidance between the drones themselves, as well as, between the fleet and payload on one hand and potentialobstacles in the environment on the other. We will work on defining and developing a specialized userinterface to allow human supervision of the drones during this collaborative mission. All algorithms and toolsdeveloped will be integrated with the software environment that is being developed by Humanitas as part of itsinternal R&D efforts on UAV swarms.

Humanitas Solutions是一家位于蒙特利尔的公司，致力于开发创新策略的领先性和灾难援助应用程序。正如我们最近在飓风Irma所目睹的那样，天然俄勒冈州制造的灾难可能会造成巨大比例的破坏和碎片，这些地形无法善待，并且没有任何功能性的基础设施。在这种情况下，使用机队的使用可能会在该地区飞行的几个小型无人驾驶汽车（UAV），可以为急救人员提供宝贵的信息，并在中级期限内提供帮助。无人机车队可以解决的一些具体任务包括监视和信息收集，重建众多区域地图，以计划和管理援助，提供空中通信节点以允许参与响应行动的当事方之间的允许沟通，紧急供应和设备。后者将成为麦吉尔和人类之间的联合项目的重点，这在本申请中却有很大的印象。鉴于单个无人机的有效载荷能力相当有限，通常是在1公斤的订单上，使用多个无人机运输较重的有效载荷的任务将在该项目中进行研究。在Adisaster方案中，有效载荷可能代表紧急医疗和生存用品或可以在不同援助组之间共享的专业设备。特别是，我们将努力使用四个多旋翼无人机来证明运输和交付较大的有效载荷。作为这项工作的一部分，We将解决与无人机的协调控制和路径计划有关的一系列问题，无人机本身之间以及机队和有效载荷之间的碰撞，另一方面是环境中的潜在键盘。我们将努力定义和开发专门的用户接口，以允许在此协作任务中对无人机的监督。所有算法和工具开发的都将与Humanitas开发的软件环境集成在一起，作为其内部研发对无人机群的一部分。