Towards autonomous navigation of multiple pocket-drones in real-world environments

Pocket-drones are inherently safe for flight near humans, and their small size allows maneuvering through narrow indoor environments. However, achieving autonomous flight of pocket-drones is challenging because of strict on-board hardware limitations. Further challenges arise when multiple pocket-drones operate as a team and need to coordinate their movements. This paper presents a set-up that can achieve autonomous flight in an indoor environment with avoidance of both static obstacles and other pocket-drones. The pocket-drones use only on-board sensing and processing implemented on a STM32F4 microprocessor (168MHz). Experiments were conducted with two 40g pocket-drones flying autonomously in a real-world office while avoiding walls, obstacles, and each-other.