Switched UAV-UGV Cooperation Scheme for Target Detection

We develop a switched cooperative control scheme, to coordinate groups of ground and aerial vehicles for the purpose of locating a moving target in a given area. We do so by stabilizing the ground group into a guarding formation using a navigation function, and then steering the aerial group along a trajectory that uniformly scans the enclosed regions. The novelty of the approach lays in combining decentralized flocking algorithms with navigation functions for obstacle avoidance, convergence to designated position, and direction control.