Constraint-based Formation of Drone Swarms

Abstract: Drone swarms are required for the simultaneous delivery of multiple packages. We demonstrate a multi-stop drone swarm-based delivery in a smart city. We leverage formation flying to conserve energy and increase the flight range of a drone swarm. An adaptive formation is presented in which a swarm adjusts to extrinsic constraints and changes the formation pattern in-flight. We utilize the existing building rooftops in a city and build a line-of-sight skyway network to safely operate the swarms. We use a heuristic-based A* algorithm to route a drone swarm in a skyway network.