UVDAR-COM: UV-Based Relative Localization of UAVs with Integrated Optical Communication

An optical inter-agent communication integrated into a relative localization system designed for the stabilization of teams of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is introduced in this paper. We propose an alternative optical communication channel using UV light as a physical transmission medium in free space. The proposed communication system is suitable for implicit short-range inter-agent communication. It is robust against channel saturation and radio jamming that are bottlenecks of radio communication commonly used within aerial swarms. The proposed localization-communication system UVDAR-COM was verified in simulations and real-world experiments. Additionally, we present a simulated experiment showing the performance of the UVDAR-COM system within a decentralized swarm application.