GO-Flock: Goal-Oriented Flocking in 3D Unknown Environments with Depth Maps

Abstract

Artificial Potential Field (APF) methods are widely used for reactive flocking control, but they often suffer from challenges such as deadlocks and local minima, especially in the presence of obstacles. Existing solutions to address these issues are typically passive, leading to slow and inefficient collective navigation. As a result, many APF approaches have only been validated in obstacle-free environments or simplified, pseudo-3D simulations. This paper presents GO-Flock, a hybrid flocking framework that integrates planning with reactive APF-based control. GO-Flock consists of an upstream Perception Module, which processes depth maps to extract waypoints and virtual agents for obstacle avoidance, and a downstream Collective Navigation Module, which applies a novel APF strategy to achieve effective flocking behavior in cluttered environments. We evaluate GO-Flock against passive APF-based approaches to demonstrate their respective merits, such as their flocking behavior and the ability to overcome local minima. Finally, we validate GO-Flock through obstacle-filled environment and also hardware-in-the-loop experiments where we successfully flocked a team of nine drones—six physical and three virtual— in a forest environment.