Autonomous surveillance by multiple cooperative UAVs

Abstract

With the recent advent of moderate-cost unmanned (or uninhabited) aerial vehicles (UAV) and their success in surveillance, it is natural to consider the cooperative management of groups of UAVs. The problem considered in this paper is the optimization of the information obtained by a group of UAVs carrying out surveillance -- search and tracking -- over a large region which includes a number of targets. The goal is to track detected targets as well as search for the undetected ones. The UAVs are assumed to be equipped with Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI) radars, which measure the locations of moving ground targets as well as their radial velocities (Doppler). In this paper, a decentralized cooperative control algorithm is proposed, according to which the UAVs exchange current scan and detection information and each UAV decides its path separately based on an information based objective function that incorporates target state information as well as target detection probability and survival probability for sensors corresponding to hostile fire by targets and collision with other UAVs. The proposed algorithm requires limited communication and modest computation and it can handle failure in communication and loss of UAVs.