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Collision Avoidance Based on Line-of-Sight Angle

Guaranteed Safety Using Limited Information About the Obstacle

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Abstract

This paper focuses on the problem of collision avoidance for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The dynamics of the UAV are modeled as a Dubins vehicle flying at constant altitude. The angular velocity is used as control input in order to avert a possible collision with a single obstacle, while the speed is left as an extra degree of freedom to achieve some temporal requirements. The proposed control algorithm uses only the line-of-sight angle as feedback: in this sense, the main contribution of this paper is providing a solution to the collision avoidance problem that can be used in situations where it is not possible to measure data such as position and velocity of the obstacle. A theoretical analysis of the result is provided, followed by simulation results that validate the efficacy of the control strategy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Coordinated Science Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1308 W Main St, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA

    Venanzio Cichella, Naira Hovakimyan, Isaac Kaminer & Anna Trujillo

  2. Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, 93943, USA

    Thiago Marinho

  3. Crew Systems and Aviation Operations Branch, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, 23666, USA

    Dušan Stipanović

Authors
  1. Venanzio Cichella
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  2. Thiago Marinho
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  3. Dušan Stipanović
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  4. Naira Hovakimyan
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  5. Isaac Kaminer
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  6. Anna Trujillo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Venanzio Cichella.

Additional information

This work has been supported in part by AFOSR, NASA and NSF.

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Cichella, V., Marinho, T., Stipanović, D. et al. Collision Avoidance Based on Line-of-Sight Angle. J Intell Robot Syst 89, 139–153 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-017-0517-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-017-0517-6

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