Interactive Real-time Leader Follower Control System for UAV and UGV

This article is aimed at creating a leader-follower system for Unmanned Aerial vehicles (UAV) and Unmanned Ground vehicles (UGV) with obstacle avoidance. In this system, the UAV acts as a leader, which is given the coordinates of a predetermined path, along which it must follow according to its algorithm. While the UGV is a follower, that needs to follow the leader by avoiding obstacles. QDrone and QBot from QUANSER were used as vehicles, and the OptitTack tracking system was applied for determining their locations. The article presents simple algorithms created for both vehicles and the results of the experiment. The experiment showed that all algorithms work flawlessly. However, problems arose with the accuracy of placing obstacles due to the limited power of the follower's onboard computer.