Collaborative UAV Exploration of Hostile Environments

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are frequently used for the exploration of a hostile environment. UAVs can be lost or significantly damaged during the exploration process. Although employing multiple UAVs can increase the chance of success, their efficiency depends on the collaboration strategies used. We present a cooperative exploration strategy for UAVs controlled by autonomous agents. The agents are sharing information, coordinate their short-term goals and path choices, while each agent uses state of the art algorithms for its individual path planning and obstacle avoidance. The overall goals are to minimize the exploration time, avoid damage by sharing information about threats, and be robust to the failures of individual UAVs. Extensive simulation results prove the validity of the approach and provide ways to determine the optimal number of UAVs for different exploration tasks.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 2004
Accession Number
ADA432922

Entities

People

  • Avelino J. Gonzalez
  • Ladislau Boeloeni
  • Linus J. Luotsinen

Organizations

  • University of Central Florida

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Algorithms
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Autonomous Agents
  • Collision Avoidance
  • Environment
  • Grids
  • Inference Engines
  • Intelligent Agents
  • Intelligent Systems
  • Motion Planning
  • Navigation
  • Probability
  • Robots
  • Simulations
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
  • Unmanned Ground Vehicles

Readers

  • Agent-Based Social Robotics and Mobile-Assisted Learning in Virtual Environments.
  • Operations Research
  • Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Autonomous Capabilities and Mission Reconnaissance.

Technology Areas

  • Autonomy
  • Autonomy - Autonomous System Control
  • Autonomy - UAVs