Xiaobing Wu | Searcharxiv

arXiv2025

A Time-efficient Prioritised Scheduling Algorithm to Optimise Initial Flock Formation of Drones

Drone applications continue to expand across various domains, with flocking offering enhanced cooperative capabilities but introducing significant challenges during initial formation. Existing flocking algorithms often struggle with efficiency and scalability, particularly when potential collisions force drones into suboptimal trajectories. This paper presents a time-efficient prioritised scheduling algorithm that improves the initial formation process of drone flocks. The method assigns each drone a priority based on its number of potential collisions and its likelihood of reaching its target position without permanently obstructing other drones. Using this hierarchy, each drone computes an appropriate delay to ensure a collision-free path. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm successfully generates collision-free trajectories for flocks of up to 5000 drones and outperforms the coupling-degree-based heuristic prioritised planning method (CDH-PP) in both performance and computational efficiency.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2025

Short-Term Guidance Algorithm on a Drone Road System

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, have experienced expanding use in urban environments in recent years. However, the growing density of drones raises significant challenges, such as avoiding collisions and managing air traffic efficiently, especially in congested areas. To address these issues, a structured road system and an effective guidance algorithm are essential. In this paper, we introduce a markup language allowing to describe drone road systems (DRS), in which a road system is given by a set of individual roads, each of which can have a varying number of lanes. Roads can be linked through connecting lanes. Furthermore, we propose a novel short-term decentralized greedy (STDG) guidance algorithm that uses only the position and speed information of nearby drones -- communicated via periodically transmitted beacons -- to make real-time decisions such as stopping, changing lanes, or adjusting speed for the next few seconds. Unlike existing methods that rely on centralized coordination, our algorithm enables drones to operate independently while ensuring safety and efficiency. We present simulation results showing the impact of key wireless and algorithm parameters on performance metrics like the drone collision rate, average speed and throughput of the drone road system.

cs.NI↗