Indoor Navigation with a Swarm of Flying Robots

Swarms of flying robots are promising in many applications due to rapid terrain coverage. However, there are numerous challenges in realising autonomous operation in unknown indoor environments. A new autonomous flight methodology is presented using relative positioning sensors in reference to nearby static robots. The entirely decentralised approach relies solely on local sensing without requiring absolute positioning, environment maps, powerful computation or long-range communication. The swarm deploys as a robotic network facilitating navigation and goal directed flight. Initial validation tests with quadrotors demonstrated autonomous flight within a confined indoor environment, indicating that they could traverse a large network of static robots across expansive environments.