An improved artificial physics approach to multiple UAVs/UGVs heterogeneous coordination

This paper proposed an improved artificial physics (AP) method to solve the autonomous navigation problem for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)/unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) heterogeneous coordination in the three-dimensional space. The basic AP method has a shortcoming of easily plunging into a local optimal solution, which can result in navigation fails. To avoid the local optimum, we improved the AP method with a random scheme. In the improved AP method, random forces are used to make heterogeneous multi-UAVs/UGVs escape from local optimum and achieve global optimum. Experimental results showed that the improved AP method can achieve smoother trajectories and smaller time consumption than the basic AP method and basic potential field method (PFM).