Swarm of Drones: Multi-Agent System for Managing Group of Interacting Drones for Industry Objects Monitoring

This article is focused on developing of autonomous «Swarm of drones« for monitoring and controlling territories based on multi-agent technology for a group of smart drones with collective decision making and negotiations, operating without operator intervention. In the proposed approach the software agents of drones independently allocate areas of the territory among themselves and create flight mission schedules. Upon detecting designated target objects, the drone agents collectively decide in real time which drone will follow the detected object and which will reorganize their flight missions and continue monitoring the remaining unoccupied territory. Multi-agent models, methods, and tools for solving the problem, as well as related navigation and pattern recognition technologies, are presented. The functions and architecture of the developed laboratory prototype of a hardware and software system for managing a group of drones are discussed. Recognition of mobile objects triggers collective, coordinated decisions by the agents to adaptively modify drone flight plans and routes in real time. The results of the experiments and the advantages of the developed multi-agent technology for unmanned control of groups of drones are discussed, as well as further steps in creating an industrial prototype of the system.

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