Conflict-Predictive Variable Horizons in Multi-Drone Distributed Model Predictive Control

2026-09-07

AI Summary

提出一种冲突预测可变视界方法，用于多无人机分布式模型预测控制中避免碰撞，通过动态调整视界长度来平衡计算成本与响应速度。

Abstract

In distributed model predictive control for multi-drone collision avoidance, a fixed prediction horizon forces a compromise: a short horizon is inexpensive but reacts late to approaching neighbors, whereas a long one anticipates conflicts at a per-step cost that grows superlinearly with its length. We propose a conflict-predictive variable horizon that each drone sets locally, leaving the distributed model predictive control itself unchanged. From a short history of observed positions, a drone extrapolates the flight lines of its neighbors, tests each against its own using confidence funnels that narrow with prediction range, and obtains each time to conflict in closed form. The horizon is then the smallest admissible value whose planning window covers the farthest predicted conflict. It collapses to its minimum in clear airspace and grows only when a conflict lies ahead. Provided this minimum meets a single computable feasibility bound, we prove that recursive feasibility and asymptotic stability are preserved for every horizon the policy can select. These guarantees hold for a linear model, and a cascaded inner loop reduces each quadrotor's translational dynamics to a perturbed double integrator, so they carry over to the linearized quadrotor model and, as practical stability, to the full nonlinear one. In simulation on dense antipodal-swap benchmarks, the variable horizon reduces both per-step solver cost and total computation well below those of a long fixed horizon, and it maintains separation in every run, which a short fixed horizon of comparable per-step cost does not.

Problem

• distributed model predictive control
• multi-drone collision avoidance
• conflict-predictive variable horizon

Innovation

• conflict-predictive
• variable horizon
• distributed model predictive control
• collision avoidance