Reachability Calculations for Vehicle Safety During Manned/Unmanned Vehicle Interaction

Abstract

This paper describes an approach based on reachability calculations for ensuring robust operation guarantees in flight maneuver sequences performed by unmanned aerial vehicles under supervision of human operators, with applicationstosafety-criticalscenarios.Usingahybridsystemformalismtomodelthemaneuversequence,thepaper devises systematic procedures for designing switching conditions to ensure the properties of safety, target attainability, and invariance, using Hamilton–Jacobi reachability calculations. These calculations lay the foundations for refining or designing protocols for multiple unmanned aerial vehicle and/or manned vehicle interaction. The mathematical foundations necessary are described in order to formulate verification problems on reachabilityandsafetyof flightmaneuvers,includingissuesofcommandlatencyanddisturbance.Anexampleofthis formalism is given in the context of automated aerial refueling, to inform unmanned aerial vehicle decisions that avoid unsafe scenarios while achieving mission objectives.