Overview
I joined the Queen’s Aerospace Design Team in Fall 2025 as a member of the Simulation subteam, which competes in the International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS) UAV Competition. The first stage requires simulating a multi-agent drone swarm tasked with autonomously tracking a ground vehicle while maintaining network connectivity and performing obstacle avoidance. We implemented a flocking algorithm within a ROS node to control a swarm of five Crazyflie quadcopters in a Gazebo simulation environment, engaging in regular design reviews with faculty specializing in swarm control to refine the architecture and analyze system behavior.
Finals
The team successfully qualified for the in person finals by placing second in the simulation stage of the competition. We travelled to ICUAS 2026 in Corfu during June, where we tested the algorithm we developed in person. We were able to successfully fly the flocking algorithm and maintain a high connectivity rate to the simulated ground vehicle for the entire battery life of the drones (~7 minutes).