Heterogeneous Cooperative Control of Multiple UAVs with Collaborative Assignment and Reactive Motion Planning

Abstract

In this paper we present results of a project addressing coordination & control of heterogeneous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAV). Thedesign of thisHeterogeneous Cooperative Control (HCC) system achieves two objectives: autonomous vehicle-to-targetassignment UAVtrajectoryplanning in a dynamically varying environment to ensure simultaneous arrival of different UAVs to a target while avoiding collisions. As a means to accomplish these objectives, preliminary steps involved: (i) Developing a realistic mission scenario involving coordination and collaboration among multiple UAVs for Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance (ISR) and strike; (ii) Developing algorithms for sensor planning using quality of information (QoI) technique, vehicle-to-task assignment, and cooperative path planning under pop-up threats; and (iii) Developing a simulation and animation in Matlab extending our previous work to demonstrate the features of the integrated system. Simulation testing demonstrated excellent performance of the resulting coordinated control system for multiple heterogeneous UAVs. In this paper we present relevant results. I. Introduction As increasing number of UAVs are used in missions ranging from reconnaissance to strike, higher level of UAV autonomous control with heterogeneous teaming, distributed tasking, and cooperative tactics is required. These heterogeneous and cooperative control (HCC) technologies need to be developed to transform a single UAV operator into a multi-UAV supervisor. To this end, methodologies that enhance the autonomy of UAVs in response to changing environment and conditions must be explored and designed. In particular, techniques that assign tasks for UAVs of differing capabilities to achieve desired mission objectives through coordination and cooperation must be developed. These techniques should enable UAVs to adapt to configuration changes such as loss of UAVs and pop-up threats. Techniques that plan trajectories for UAVs to accomplish the assigned tasks while avoiding spatial obstacles such as no-fly-zone or pop-up threat zones and meeting time constraints such as shortest completion time or simultaneous arrival time must also be developed. Mission scenarios involving coordination and collaboration among multiple UAVs need be devised; control architectures, simulations, and demos must be developed to verify the HCC capabilities. In this study, heterogeneous and cooperative control technologies are developed for multiple UAVs of different capabilities to autonomously accomplish assigned missions through coordination and collaboration in the presence of spatial and temporal constraints.