Game‐theoretic approach for the optimal configuration computing of an interoperable fleet of unmanned vehicles

Abstract

AbstractThis paper investigates the problem of fleet configuration for a set of unmanned vehicles. Without the need of on‐board pilots, unmanned vehicles have proven to accomplish different types of missions both in military and civil domain. In addition, a multi‐vehicle fleet is able to guarantee better performances and minimum costs, as long as they are coordinated. In futuristic scenarios, it is conceivable to quickly identify the best team of unmanned vehicles to perform a given mission by considering all the appropriate means made available. Thus, the problem to guarantee the better platform configuration becomes identifying the best fleet. This work proposes a possible approach to process the best fleet of unmanned vehicles to perform an envelope of missions, by transforming the fleet configuration activity in an optimization problem under some basic hypotheses. The optimality of the fleet is meant with respect to the needed costs, which have to be minimized. The addressed concept envisages a distributed and decentralized planning to achieve a proper level of interoperability among different organizations that are involved in the fleet provision. The paper presents the formal definition of the problem and a game‐theoretic solution. In the end, preliminary simulation results are discussed.