Motion Planning and Task Assignment for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Cooperating with Unattended Ground Sensors

Abstract

In this research we focused on intertwined low-level motion planning and high-level task assignment for a cooperating team of heterogeneous unmanned assets. As a case study we are envisioning the scenario where a team of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has to query a set of unattended ground sensors (UGSs), positioned along a road network. In such a scenario the UAV team cooperates in searching and prosecuting ground target intruders, identified by the ground sensors. Of particular interest to us was the cooperation and coordination between the unmanned aerial vehicles in devising their assignments and trajectories. The research was conducted in two phases. In the first phase we have concentrated on the motion planning and task assignment aspects of the problem where a single UAV has to decide on the query ordering of the UGSs, given constraints on its motion. This problem was formalized as the Dubins travelling salesman problem (TSP). In the second phase of the research we have paid special attention to the coupled motion planning and task assignment problem for groups of UAVs and UGSs. The specific problem considered includes allocating the group of UAVs to a given set of UGSs while accounting for the vehicles kinematic constraints and avoiding collision with obstacles scattered in the vehicles environment.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 24, 2014
Accession Number
ADA619854

Entities

People

  • Pantelis Isaiah
  • Tal Shima
  • Yoav Gottlieb

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Autonomy
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force Research Laboratories
  • Aircrafts
  • Algorithms
  • Computational Complexity
  • Control Systems
  • Environment
  • Integer Programming
  • Linear Programming
  • Motion Planning
  • Multiple Targets
  • Optimization
  • Simulations
  • Trajectories
  • Unmanned
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
  • Unmanned Vehicles
  • Vehicles

Readers

  • Aerial Unmanned Vehicle Swarm Micro Periodontal Dentistry.
  • Operations Research
  • Sensor Fusion and Tracking Systems.

Technology Areas

  • Autonomy
  • Autonomy - UAVs