Information expectation from unmanned aircraft swarms
Michael L. Talbert, Patrick Baldwin, Guna S. Seetharaman · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2006
This paper lays the groundwork for modeling the quantification of sensor coverage for Unmanned Aircraft (UA) swarms of sensors. The concept of information expectation is defined, elaborated, and illustrated. Areas of interest (AOI)s are analyzed from a swarm standpoint to determine the quantity of coverage afforded by a swarm of multiple sensor-laden UAs. This work also investigates the coverage of AOIs as determined by the mission duration, area of the region, and time-variable swarm geometry. By experimentation using simulation, we gain insight into the quantifiable influence of varying swarm sizes and configurations on area coverage. This in turn allows validation of formulae and algorithms for computing approximation of expected opportunities for relevant information collection.