Making Robotics Swarm Flow More Smoothly: A Regular Virtual Tube Model

Abstract

This paper proposes a model of a class of regular virtual tubes that can generate safe, feasible, and smooth space for a robotics swarm in an obstacle-dense environment, especially for a drone swarm based on the flocking model. The regular principles are first proposed, and the regular conditions are then formulated based on the principles. A method to obtain a regular virtual tube is also presented based on trajectory planning and regular conditions. The proposed method's effectiveness and robustness are comprehensively demonstrated in a simulation environment with random obstacles.