Design method of organizational structure for MAVs and UAVs heterogeneous team with adjustable autonomy

Abstract

The increasingly complex battlefield environment requests much closer connection in a team having both manned and unmanned aerial vehicles (MAVs and UAVs). This special heterogeneous team structure causes demands for effective organizational structure design solutions. Implementing adjustable autonomy in the organizational structure, the expected evaluation function is established based on the physical resource, intelligent resource, network efficiency, network vulnerability and task execution reliability. According to the above constraints, together with interaction latency, decision-making information processing capacity, and decision-making latency, we aim to find a preferential organizational structure. The proposed organizational structure includes cooperative relationships, supervisory control relationships, and decision-making authorization relationships. In addition, by considering the influence on the intelligent support capabilities and the task execution reliability created by adjustable autonomy, it helps to build the proposed organizational structure designed with certain degree of flexibility to deal with the potential changes in the unpredictable battlefield environment. Simulation is conducted to confirm our design to be valid. And the method is still valid under different battlefield environments and interventions.