A study on centralised and decentralised swarm robotics architecture for part delivery system

Drones are also known as UAVs are originally designed for military purposes. With the technological

advances, they can be seen in most of the aspects of life from filming to logistics. The increased use of

drones made it sometimes essential to form a collaboration between them to perform the task efficiently

in a defined process. This paper investigates the use of a combined centralised and decentralised

architecture for the collaborative operation of drones in a parts delivery scenario to enable and expedite

the operation of the factories of the future. The centralised and decentralised approaches were extensively

researched, with experimentation being undertaken to determine the appropriateness of each approach

for this use-case. Decentralised control was utilised to remove the need for excessive communication

during the operation of the drones, resulting in smoother operations. Initial results suggested that the

decentralised approach is more appropriate for this use-case. The individual functionalities necessary

for the implementation of a decentralised architecture were proven and assessed, determining that a

combination of multiple individual functionalities, namely VSLAM, dynamic collision avoidance and

object tracking, would give an appropriate solution for use in an industrial setting. A final architecture for

the parts delivery system was proposed for future work, using a combined centralised and decentralised

approach to combat the limitations inherent in each architecture.