Onboard Trajectory Coordination of Multiple Unmanned Air Vehicles

The increasing proliferation of autonomous air vehicles (AAV) and their applications has created an increased need for effective aircraft trajectory coordination within airspaces. Here, a method to coordinate a flight formation of multiple AAVs using onboard command and control is introduced. The proposed system has been verified in simulation and validated in flight. The results show that it is possible to control a fleet of multi-rotor aircraft using equipment present onboard the aircraft. Areas of improvement to increase accuracy and reliability of the system have also been proposed.