Distributed Architecture to Address Communication Challenges in Achieving Multi - UUV Autonomy
Abstract
Abstract For a team of vehicles to truly operate autonomously in a coordinated manner, robust distributed team knowledge is needed, which is typically established by frequent exchange of messages. By maintaining distributed team knowledge the vehicles can begin to work together intelligently, but that is not enough. Most team missions tend to be goal oriented, however, during the execution of these goals a single vehicle or a team of vehicles may need to assume new roles. In this case the vehicle or team of vehicles will need to break away from the pack and re-task dynamically based on situational awareness. Situational awareness is the merging of sensor data from individual vehicles with team knowledge in order to come to conclusions that they would not normally be able to on their own. This allows vehicles to make changes to their current task in a more intelligent manner. Dynamic re-tasking will lead to vehicles abandoning their previous roles and assuming new ones in order to accomplish emergent tasks. But if the role assignment is done in an ad hoc fashion the original mission could be severely compromised. When one or more vehicles make changes to their task, task consensus needs to be reestablished. Task consensus is achieved when every vehicle in the team is aware of its own task as well as all other team members’ tasks. Task consensus can be derived from team knowledge, which would be maintained through communication. Task consensus is critical to maintaining the original mission while accomplishing newly discovered tasks.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Aug 12, 2016
- Source ID
- N000141512073
Entities
People
- Ramprasad Balasubramanian
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of Massachusetts