Cooperative Airborne Sensor Platforms for Enhanced Reconnaissance: A Concept for managing Task-Based Cooperation
Sebastian Bening, Adrian E. Albert, Peter Stütz · 2024
This article introduces a concept for a general Multi-Sensor / Multi-Platform planning and deployment system to be used in airborne Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance missions. Traditionally, armed forces have a large variety of different airborne vehicles and sensors at their disposal. To use these resources in a more effective manner, the aim is to deploy them cooperatively. In combination with the wide range of mission types, this approach results in challenging planning problems for a human mission planner. The complexity is increased further by the amount of data that can be collated by a multi-vehicle system during the mission execution. To improve the intelligence gathering capabilities whilst reducing the operator's workload, we strive to automatize the process partially. The analysis of available resources and related capabilities in conjunction with novel multi-sensor cooperation mechanisms, offer a promising approach. Within this paper we present the concept for a task-based cooperation manager offering an automatized process for the planning and monitoring of surveillance and reconnaissance missions. A detailed description of the system is provided, cooperation mechanisms are outlined, and a software architecture for validation and verification of the concept is presented.