Original title: Vision-Based Leader-Follower Formation Control for Cooperative UAVs in GPS-Degraded Environments
Deekshitha Angadi, Naveena Budda, Vikas Agarwal, Rojesh Arunkumar Mulasa +3 · September 2026
Drones flying in formation often rely on GPS to stay in position, but GPS signals can fail or weaken. To fix this, researchers designed a system that lets a follower drone track a leader drone using vision alone. The follower carries a front-facing camera that captures color and depth. An onboard, lightweight visual detector finds the leader drone on screen. The system then combines those detections with depth data using a standard camera model to calculate exactly where the leader is located. A flight controller uses these position estimates to guide the follower drone safely. In computer simulations with sensor noise and lost communication signals, this setup kept the drones in a stable formation with reasonable computer processing power, even when positioning sensors failed.
Imagine walking through a busy airport with a friend, but your phone dies so you can't call them. You keep your eyes on them and match their speed and direction to stay close. If they turn left, you turn left. In this paper, drones do the same: a follower drone uses its camera to watch the leader drone and mirrors its movements, keeping formation without relying on external navigation signals.
Drones used in delivery, search and rescue, or inspection often rely on GPS, which can fail indoors or in cities. This system lets them stick together safely using only a camera, so missions can continue without external signals.
The work is evaluated only in a simulation, not with real drones in real-world conditions. It relies on a detector trained on a specific drone dataset, which might not generalize perfectly. The abstract does not test performance in highly dynamic environments or with multiple follower drones.
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Vision-Based Leader-Follower Formation Control for Cooperative UAVs in GPS-Degraded Environments — Deekshitha Angadi, Naveena Budda, Vikas Agarwal et al.
Abstract licence: CC0
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper. This is a preprint, so it hasn't necessarily been peer reviewed.