Multiple Task Assignment for a UAV Team
Phillip Chandler, Meir N. Pachter, Steven Rasmussen, Corey J. Schumacher · AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference and Exhibit · 2002
This paper addresses the dynamic allocation of strongly coupled multiple tasks in cooperative decision and control of a distributed autonomous UAV team. Many techniques can be used for single task assignment, but multiple task assignment requires the enforcement of a rigid set of timing and precedence constraints. This is computationally intensive if there are many tasks. This paper discusses the methods of relative benefit, iterative network flow, and iterative auction for multiple assignment. These approaches are computationally efficient for on-line computation and can satisfy the task timing constraints. Simulations are performed for a team of eight vehicles cooperatively searching for and attacking targets. Results show that multiple assignment using these techniques results in a significant improvement in performance over single task assignment.