MIT Researchers Algorithm Drone Collisions

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MIT Researchers Develop Algorithm Preventing Midair Drone Collisions

by DRONELIFE Staff Writer Ian M. Crosby

In 2020, MIT researchers presented MADDER, a system designed to prevent crashes between drones occupying the same airspace.

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The multiagent trajectory-planner enables a group of drones to form trajectories to avoid collision, with each drone broadcasting its trajectory and in turn considering the trajectories of its fellow drones when charting its course.

MADER is an asynchronous, decentralized, multiagent trajectory-planner. Each drone generates its own trajectory, and although each agent must agree on every new trajectory, they needn’t agree simultaneously. This method renders MADER more scalable than alternative solutions, due to the extensive difficulty of getting large quantities of drones to agree on a trajectory at the same time.

However, testing the system on real drones found that a drone…