Robust Multi-UAV Data Collection

In this paper we speciflcally deal with the coordination of a team of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) assigned the task of collecting data from a set of remote unattended ground sensors (UGSs) over time. The control center creates time-limited sensor-visit tasks and assigns them to the UAVs. The tasks should be created and distributed in such a way that the data at the control center is as up-to-date as possible while the sum of distances traveled by the UAVs is minimized. We present a market-based coordination system for assigning the tasks to team members. Frequent auctioning, time limited contracts, and time-dependent prices, which are essential parts of our implementation, make it robust to failures such as UAV or UGS deaths or temporary communication failures. We have shown how the communication range and re-auctioning can in∞uence the quality of the solution. The adaptation of this method to team modiflcations is also validated empirically.