Multiple cooperative unmanned air vehicles engaging multiple targets time-optimally

This article presents a solution to the real-time control of cooperative unmanned air vehicles that engage multiple targets in a time-optimal manner. Techniques to allocate vehicles dynamically to targets and to find the time-optimal control actions of vehicles are proposed. The effectiveness of the time-optimal control technique is first demonstrated through numerical examples. The proposed control strategy is then applied to two practical problems: firstly ten vehicles engage four targets where each target must be engaged by three vehicles, and secondly, four vehicles engage ten targets where each target must be engaged by two vehicles. The numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy, and the applicability to the real-time control and the scalability of the proposed control strategy are further discussed.

[1]  L. Dubins.  On Curves of Minimal Length with a Constraint on Average Curvature, and with Prescribed Initial and Terminal Positions and Tangents , 1957 .

[2]  Jacob Intrator,et al.  Auxiliary procedures for solving long transportation problems , 1980 .

[3]  S. Sethi,et al.  The Dynamic Transportation Problem: A Survey , 1980 .

[4]  C. Goh,et al.  A simple computational procedure for optimization problems with functional inequality constraints , 1987 .

[5]  Warren B. Powell,et al.  A COMPARATIVE REVIEW OF ALTERNATIVE ALGORITHMS FOR THE DYNAMIC VEHICLE ALLOCATION PROBLEM , 1988 .

[6]  Linos F. Frantzeskakis,et al.  A Successive Linear Approximation Procedure for Stochastic, Dynamic Vehicle Allocation Problems , 1990, Transp. Sci..

[7]  C. Goh,et al.  Nonlinearly constrained discrete-time optimal-control problems , 1990 .

[8]  Kok Lay Teo,et al.  A Unified Computational Approach to Optimal Control Problems , 1991 .

[9]  Dimitris Bertsimas,et al.  Stochastic and Dynamic Vehicle Routing in the Euclidean Plane with Multiple Capacitated Vehicles , 1993, Oper. Res..

[10]  Christian Laugier,et al.  Dynamic Trajectory Planning Path-Velocity Decomposition and Adjacent Paths , 1993, IJCAI.

[11]  C. McInnes.  Autonomous ring formation for a planar constellation of satellites , 1995 .

[12]  Richard M. Murray,et al.  Real Time Trajectory Generation for Differentially Flat Systems , 1996 .

[13]  Hani S. Mahmassani,et al.  Dynamic Decision Making for Commercial Fleet Operations Using Real-Time Information , 1996 .

[14]  Paolo Fiorini,et al.  Time optimal trajectory planning in dynamic environments , 1996, Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[15]  Kar-Han Tan,et al.  High Precision Formation Control of Mobile Robots Using Virtual Structures , 1997, Auton. Robots.

[16]  Hiroaki Kitano,et al.  RoboCup: A Challenge Problem for AI , 1997, AI Mag..

[17]  Xiaoping Yun,et al.  Line and circle formation of distributed physical mobile robots , 1997, J. Field Robotics.

[18]  K. Teo,et al.  Control parametrization enhancing technique for time optimal control problems , 1997 .

[19]  Mark R. Anderson,et al.  FORMATION FLIGHT AS A COOPERATIVE GAME , 1998 .

[20]  Joel W. Burdick,et al.  Asymptotic stabilization of multiple nonholonomic mobile robots forming group formations , 1998, Proceedings. 1998 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.98CH36146).

[21]  R. Choenni,et al.  On vehicle allocation to targets in mission planning , 1998 .

[22]  Tucker R. Balch,et al.  Behavior-based formation control for multirobot teams , 1998, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[23]  Vijay Kumar,et al.  Decentralized control of cooperating mobile manipulators , 1998, Proceedings. 1998 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.98CH36146).

[24]  R. Isaacs.  Differential games: a mathematical theory with applications to warfare and pursuit , 1999 .

[25]  Byung Kook Kim,et al.  Near-time-optimal trajectory planning for wheeled mobile robots with translational and rotational sections , 2001, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[26]  Vijay Kumar,et al.  Modeling and control of formations of nonholonomic mobile robots , 2001, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[27]  Randal W. Beard,et al.  A coordination architecture for spacecraft formation control , 2001, IEEE Trans. Control. Syst. Technol..

[28]  G. Inalhan,et al.  Decentralized overlapping control of a formation of unmanned aerial vehicles , 2002, Proceedings of the 41st IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 2002..

[29]  Thierry Siméon,et al.  Path coordination for multiple mobile robots: a resolution-complete algorithm , 2002, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[30]  Bernhard Nebel,et al.  CS Freiburg: coordinating robots for successful soccer playing , 2002, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[31]  Timothy W. McLain,et al.  Coordinated target assignment and intercept for unmanned air vehicles , 2002, Proceedings 2002 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.02CH37292).

[32]  T. Furukawa.  Time-Subminimal Trajectory Planning for Discrete Non-linear Systems , 2002 .

[33]  William B. Dunbar,et al.  Model predictive control of coordinated multi-vehicle formations , 2002, Proceedings of the 41st IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 2002..

[34]  William B. Dunbar,et al.  Cooperative control of multi-vehicle systems using cost graphs and optimization , 2003, Proceedings of the 2003 American Control Conference, 2003..

[35]  Hugh F. Durrant-Whyte,et al.  Time-optimal cooperative control of multiple robot vehicles , 2003, 2003 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.03CH37422).

[36]  Randy Beard,et al.  Information consensus in distributed multiple vehicle coordinated control , 2003, 42nd IEEE International Conference on Decision and Control (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37475).

[37]  Hugh F. Durrant-Whyte,et al.  Optimal Search for a Lost Target in a Bayesian World , 2003, FSR.

[38]  Hugh F. Durrant-Whyte,et al.  Coordinated decentralized search for a lost target in a Bayesian world , 2003, Proceedings 2003 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2003) (Cat. No.03CH37453).

[39]  Jian Yang,et al.  Real-Time Multivehicle Truckload Pickup and Delivery Problems , 2004, Transp. Sci..

[40]  Hugh F. Durrant-Whyte,et al.  Decentralized Bayesian negotiation for cooperative search , 2004, 2004 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37566).

[41]  Hugh F. Durrant-Whyte,et al.  Process model, constraints, and the coordinated search strategy , 2004, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2004. Proceedings. ICRA '04. 2004.

[42]  Rodney Teo,et al.  Decentralized overlapping control of a formation of unmanned aerial vehicles , 2004, Autom..