Direct Remote Id based UAS Collision Avoidance System

Abstract: The drone industry is growing and the need for increased autonomy will be required if large fleetof drones will be able to fly without a single pilot per drone. A useful part of automating the flighten-route can be achieved with the upcoming standard of Direct Remote Id (DRI), which signalspositional data for drones and can be used as the perceptive part in a collision avoidance systembetween drones with the advantage of limited weight penalties and minimal financial cost.Simulations were carried out to understand different kinds of evasive maneuvers and develop asimple yet effective algorithm for avoiding obstacles and continue towards the next waypoint ona mission. Positional data can be retrieved with an ESP-32 board from a flight computer withMavlink protocol, which can then be broadcasted and received to an ESP-32 board using DirectRemote Id. The distances between the nearest drones can be computed, along with the shortest al-lowable distance and closest positions of the drones, if they were to continue on a straight course. Ifthe closest passing distance turned out closer than a set safety distance, an evasive maneuver is cal-culated and executed, with preliminary work focusing on evasion maneuvers on an horizontal plane.Flight tests showed that an evasive position could be calculated, and the drone successfully di-verted to it, while continuing with the mission after the evasion was completed. These resultsshowed the potential of using Direct Remote Id as a simple close proximity detection for use withcollision avoidance