Cooperative UAV Task Planning for Prosecution of Moving Ground Targets
Corey J. Schumacher, Anne Deglopper, Adam Fulford, Derek B. Kingston · Infotech@Aerospace · 2005
The problem of assigning multiple agents to time-dependent cooperative tasks is addressed. A timedependent cooperative task is a task requiring multiple agents to perform separate subtasks simultaneously or within some predetermined margin, subject to limited agent availability windows. This paper focuses on the problem of determining optimal paths and availability windows for UAVs performing tasks required for the tracking and prosecution of moving ground targets by a team of cooperative UAVs. The scenario includes a stand-off vehicle using a wide-area Ground Moving Target Indication (GMTI) radar, and several stand-in UAVs with weapons and GMTI radars with smaller coverage areas. Methods for optimal path calculation, dependent on vehicle, sensor, weapon, and target motion constraints are presented. Time windows for possible task prosecution are calculated for each UAV, and incorporated into a Mixed-Integer Linear Program to determine the optimal allocation of vehicle resources. Simulation results are presented, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.