Abstract:Due to the high flexibility and complementary , the Multi-UAVs system is suitable for complex and cramped operational environments, demonstrating significant application potential in military, rescue, monitoring, and logistics fields. However, achieving safe and efficient path planning for Multi-UAVs system in cramped spaces still faces several challenges. On the one hand, the reduction of the safe search space limits the generation of flight paths which satisfies the motion of drones; on the other hand, the cramped environment increases the risk of collisions between drones. Thus, the paper presents a cooperative path generation method based on a body constraint tree, containing a hierarchical collaboration planning framework that includes a high-level conflict avoidance module and a low-level path generation module. In the framework, the Enhanced Conflict-Based Search (ECBS) algorithm is improved to address conflict in global path planning and avoide the occurrence of local deadlocks. By optimizing the conflict resolution strategy during the global planning phase, a stable and efficient collaboration of multi-UAV systems in complex environments has been achieved. In addition, experiments were conducted in the Rviz simulation environment with random, adversarial, and interleaved multi-flight missions. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can generate smooth cooperative paths for at least 60 UAVs within a few minutes.
