Surveillance by multiple cooperative UAVs in adversarial environments
X. Tian, Yaakov Bar‐Shalom, Krishna Rao Pattipati, Abhijit Sinha · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2008
In this paper a real-time cooperative path decision algorithm for UAV surveillance is proposed. The surveillance mission includes multiple objectives: i) Navigate the UAVs safely in a hostile environment; ii) Search for new targets in the surveillance region; iii) Classify the detected targets; iv) Maintain tracks on the detected targets. To handle these competing objectives, a layered decision framework is proposed, in which different objectives are relevant at different decision layers according to their priorities. Compared to previous work, in which multiple objectives are integrated into a single global objective function, this layered decision framework allows detailed specification of the desired performance for each objective and guarantees that an objective with high priority will be first satisfied by eliminating possible compromises from other less important ones. In addition, path decision strategies that are suited to individual objectives can be used at different decision layers. The layered decision framework, along with a multi-step look-ahead path decision strategy based on a Roll-out policy is shown to be able to guide the UAV group effectively for the multi-objective surveillance in a hostile environment.