UAV Swarm Mission Planning and Routing using Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithms

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to design and implement a comprehensive mission planning system for swarms of autonomous aerial vehicles (UAV). The system integrates several problem domains including path planning, vehicle routing, and swarm behavior as based upon a hierarchical architecture. The developed system consists of a parallel, multi-objective evolutionary algorithm-based terrain-following parallel path planner and an evolutionary algorithm-based vehicle router. Objectives include minimizing cost and risk generally associated with a three dimensional vehicle routing problem (VRP). The culmination of this effort is the development of an extensible developmental path planning model integrated with swarm behavior and tested with a parallel UAV simulation. Discussions on the system's capabilities are presented along with recommendations for further development.