Control Barrier Function-Based Persistent Coverage with Performance Guarantee and Application to Object Search Scenario

In this paper, we propose a performance guaranteed persistent coverage control for a network of drones equipped with onboard cameras based on control barrier functions (CBFs). We first present a constraint-based controller for persistent coverage by combining the authors' previous work and the concept of time-varying CBFs. The controller is then proved to guarantee γ-level coverage performance. The presented controller is then applied to an object search problem with four specifications: persistent coverage (if an object is not detected), keeping the object inside of the field of view (if detected), collision avoidance, and prevention of battery exhaustion. We then propose a constraint-based controller by integrating constraints associated with all of these specifications, and an algorithm to solve the problem. We finally demonstrate the presented algorithm through experiments on a testbed.