How can I simulate a swarm of drones based on sensor input other that lidar

Hello,

I am trying to simulate a swarm of drones for a search and rescue scenario. I am not concerned about the flight dynamics, so a low resolution model would be enough. The scenario is described in the figure:

The drones communicate with ground stations through WiFi, and they use a different wireless technology to communicate between them. It is a FANET for which I am trying to test UAV mobility models aimed at improving coverage and maintaining connectivity between the ground nodes and the control station. I've been working with the uavPlatform object and it can mount different sensors, including lidar and GPS. The first question is: Can the uavPlatform object be used to simulate a variable number of drones? The second question is: Can I mount a custom sensor to replace the lidar? In my case, the wireless receivers can be considered sensors that deliver signal strength as an input to move and position the UAV (I was thinking of mounting a WiFi receiver from the WLAN Toolbox). Third: Can I mount more than one sensor simultaneously? Finally, is there any other way to achieve this other than using uavPlatform?

I appreciate your help.

Answer 1

[Jianxin Sun]

Hi William,

Can the uavPlatform object be used to simulate a variable number of drones?

A: You can put any number of drones into uavScenario using uavPlatform. However you cannot remove UAVs from scenario during simulation. You could park them somewhere in the scenario using the move method to teleport them if you don't want them to show up in the main simulation area.

Can I mount a custom sensor to replace the lidar? In my case, the wireless receivers can be considered sensors that deliver signal strength as an input to move and position the UAV (I was thinking of mounting a WiFi receiver from the WLAN Toolbox).

A: You can use the uav.SensorAdaptor class to adapt your own sensor model and use it in the uavScenario. You can check the following examples for how to implement sensor adaptor for IMU and Radar sensor:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/uav/ug/simulate-imu-sensor-mount-on-uav.html

https://www.mathworks.com/help/uav/ug/simulate-radar-sensor-mounted-on-uav.html

Can I mount more than one sensor simultaneously?

A: Yes, you can mount any amount of sensors on a UAV. The following examples show how to do sensor fusion using both Lidar and Radar sensors: https://www.mathworks.com/help/uav/ug/lidar-and-radar-fusion-in-an-urban-air-mobility-scenario.html

Is there any other way to achieve this other than using uavPlatform?

A: Alternative tool for scenario simulation could be using Unreal based Simulation in Simulink. However, it doesn't support custom sensors and only work in Simulink.

[VAIBHAV]

Hello

i want to make master slave configration with drone ..1 master 4 slave and both should in motion ,do anyone have refernce code of that

Answer 2

[William Paredes]

Thank you for your promt reply, Jianxin.

Just to make sure, I think I need to rephrase the first question: Is it possible to define the number or drones in execution time?

Regarding the posibility of mounting transceivers from the WLAN toolbox as sensors, after doing so, is it possible to use WLAN performance measurement tools from the toolbox?

Thank you again!

[Jianxin Sun]

Hi William

1. The UAVs cannot be dynamically add or remove from the scene. For a workaround, you can initiate a large amount of UAVs that meet your upper bound need before simulation starts. And teleport them in/out of the simulation area as needed.
2. The custom sensor template gives you information about the UAV's position, orientation, velocity , as well as all other UAV's in the scenario. If the WLAN toolbox offer tool to compute signal strength using these information, then you should be able to incoporate it into the scenario as a custom sensor.

[William Paredes]

Hi again, Jianxin.

Actually, I was able to dynamically add UAVs by populating an array of uavPlatform odjects with a predefined waypointTrajectory by using a for loop. Then, I used the advance method within another for loop. What I couldn't do is use the move method with the array of uavPlatform odjects because of argument dimension incompatibility.

This way of dinamically creating UAVs works for a predefined trajectory, but if I need to dinamically change the UAVs' position, I guess I could do it by creating a new trajectory and updating the UAVs' position and orientation with the updateMesh method. Please let me know if that might work.

Thank you for the examples on how to implement sensor adaptors!

[Jianxin Sun]

Hi William,

The following example would show how to move the platforms according to sensor input and motion planning algorithm:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/uav/ug/avoid-moving-obstacles-based-on-radar-detections.html

It shows a scenario with two UAVs, one along pre-defined trajectory, the other are moved according to a simple controller to avoid collision.

The move can only apply to one platform at a time, so a for loop would be needed if you want to loop through each UAV and move them

[William Paredes]

Thank you, Jianxin. I'll take a look at it.

I have to correct a mistake in my previous comment: the move method didn't work, not because an argument dimension incompatibility, but because lookupPose returns NaN "If any sample time is beyond the duration of the trajectory", which is not accepted by move.