A Multi-Drone System for Oil Spill Detection: A Simulation and Emulation Platform

This paper presents a model for a multi-drone system used for detecting oil spills in seawater. The system is designed to provide an early warning for oil-derivative contamination that may threaten maritime life forms. The system hosts a lightweight machine vision algorithm for detecting oil spills and generating a path for the drones to follow. Also, the system incorporates robust communication; allowing the drones to collaborate as they track the generated path. To achieve autonomous tracking for drones, a robust control scheme is proposed. Specifically, the drone's dynamics model is decomposed into two subsystems in terms of time scale transformation; leading to inner and outer loop dynamics. A combination of nonlinear integral sliding surface and backstepping procedure is employed to produce appropriate thrust and torque forces, which guarantees robust tracking performances of the drones. The proposed system was verified both in simulation as well as in an indoor multi-drone verification environment. The results attest to the efficacy of the developed model.