Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) is a powerful optimisation algorithm that can be used to locate global maxima in a search space. Recent interest in swarms of Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) begs the question as to whether PSO can be used as a method to enable real robotic swarms to locate a target goal point. However, the original PSO algorithm does not take into account collisions between particles during search. In this paper we propose a novel algorithm called Force Field Particle Swarm Optimisation (FFPSO) that designates repellent force fields to particles such that these fields provide an additional velocity component into the original PSO equations. We compare the performance of FFPSO with PSO and show that it has the ability to reduce the number of particle collisions during search to 0 whilst also being able to locate a target of interest in a similar amount of time. The scalability of the algorithm is also demonstrated via a set of experiments that considers how the number of crashes and the time taken to find the goal varies according to swarm size. Finally, we demonstrate the algorithms applicability on a swarm of real MAVs.
We begin by reviewing the most related work in the area of PSO, Potential Field methods and Flocking. PSO itself is a vast field with applications in many different areas (see @cite_22 for details), our aim here is not to cover the entirety of this but only what is relevant to aerial and swarm robotics. We also review some relevant work in the area of Potential Field methods, which are almost identical in nature to the force field" used in this work. However, we feel the alternative name is more appropriate in our work due to the 3-dimensional and finite nature of our fields acting around aerial robots. Finally, we review similar collision avoidance strategies employed in flocking algorithms.
@cite_22
1859314164 836179420 1994445384 2023086460
Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a heuristic global optimization method, proposed originally by Kennedy and Eberhart in 1995. It is now one of the most commonly used optimization techniques. This survey presented a comprehensive investigation of PSO. On one hand, we provided advances with PSO, including its modifications (including quantum-behaved PSO, bare-bones PSO, chaotic PSO, and fuzzy PSO), population topology (as fully connected, von Neumann, ring, star, random, etc.), hybridization (with genetic algorithm, simulated annealing, Tabu search, artificial immune system, ant colony algorithm, artificial bee colony, differential evolution, harmonic search, and biogeography-based optimization), extensions (to multiobjective, constrained, discrete, and binary optimization), theoretical analysis (parameter selection and tuning, and convergence analysis), and parallel implementation (in multicore, multiprocessor, GPU, and cloud computing forms). On the other hand, we offered a survey on applications of PSO to the following eight fields: electrical and electronic engineering, automation control systems, communication theory, operations research, mechanical engineering, fuel and energy, medicine, chemistry, and biology. It is hoped that this survey would be beneficial for the researchers studying PSO algorithms. This work presents a method to build a robust controller for a hose transportation system performed by aerial robots. We provide the system dynamic model, equations and desired equilibrium criteria. Control is obtained through PID controllers tuned by particle swarm optimization (PSO). The control strategy is illustrated for three quadrotors carrying two sections of a hose, but the model can be easily expanded to a bigger number of quadrotors system, due to the approach modularity. Experiments demonstrate the PSO tuning method convergence, which is fast. More than one solution is possible, and control is very robust. Particle swarm optimisation (PSO) has been enormously successful. Within little more than a decade hundreds of papers have reported successful applications of PSO. In fact, there are so many of them, that it is difficult for PSO practitioners and researchers to have a clear up-to-date vision of what has been done in the area of PSO applications. This brief paper attempts to fill this gap, by categorising a large number of publications dealing with PSO applications stored in the IEEE Xplore database at the time of writing. The initial state of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) system and the relative state of the system, the continuous inputs of each flight unit are piecewise linear by a Control Parameterization and Time Discretization (CPTD) method. The approximation piecewise linearization control inputs are used to substitute for the continuous inputs. In this way, the multi-UAV formation reconfiguration problem can be formulated as an optimal control problem with dynamical and algebraic constraints. With strict constraints and mutual interference, the multi-UAV formation reconfiguration in 3-D space is a complicated problem. The recent boom of bio-inspired algorithms has attracted many researchers to the field of applying such intelligent approaches to complicated optimization problems in multi-UAVs. In this paper, a Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization and Genetic Algorithm (HPSOGA) is proposed to solve the multi-UAV formation reconfiguration problem, which is modeled as a parameter optimization problem. This new approach combines the advantages of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Genetic Algorithm (GA), which can find the time-optimal solutions simultaneously. The proposed HPSOGA will also be compared with basic PSO algorithm and the series of experimental results will show that our HPSOGA outperforms PSO in solving multi-UAV formation reconfiguration problem under complicated environments.