A distributed, real-time and easy-to-extend strategy for missions of autonomous aircraft squadrons

This study proposes a distributed, real-time and easy-to-extend strategy for missions of autonomous aircraft squadrons, which considerably improves the autonomy of the squadron. The squadron is called autonomous because there is no need for pilots or remote control. The fleet is able to exhibit a collective behavior without any communication among the aerial vehicles, and if one aircraft is lost, the other vehicles are not affected. Furthermore, the generated number of time steps is kept linear as the number of aerial vehicles increases, and each aircraft is capable of avoiding static and dynamic obstacles, even in the presence of noise. The proposed designing pattern reduces the programming effort necessary for including new formations in the scheme. Besides, all subroutines’ running times are finished within the proposed real-time scheduling. Conclusions are validated by means of simulations.