Exploiting mobility heterogeneity in micro-aerial vehicle deployments for environment exploration

A cooperative deployment strategy for effective exploration of unknown environments by micro-aerial vehicles with limited sensing is presented. The approach advances an exploration objective while optimizing localization quality to ensure stable and safe operation. The impact of heterogeneous vehicle mobility, environment sensing, and inter-vehicle range measurements on system performance is considered. Numerical simulations demonstrate the need for vehicles to coordinate and choose to land in support of enhanced cooperative localization accuracy. Sensitivity to limited range and uncertainty typical of micro-aerial vehicles is evaluated in numerical simulations that demonstrate the application of the cooperative deployment strategy in challenging environments given each vehicle's sensor capabilities.