A distributed drone-search framework addresses the difficulty of maintaining coordinated flight when satellite navigation is unavailable.
The researchers use distance measurements between neighbouring drones to estimate positions, while explicitly modelling how localisation uncertainty accumulates through multi-hop connections. Individual drones incorporate those uncertainty estimates into collision avoidance, communication connectivity and search coverage decisions. Simulations involving six to thirty aircraft demonstrate the approach across different search-region geometries. Additional estimator-in-the-loop evaluations report repeatable search completion, although the published evidence does not establish an operational maritime deployment.
