Cooperative Behavior and Control in Groups of Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs)

"The goal of this proposed effort is build a modular and expandable control system architecture that will flexibly accommodate multiple autonomous unmanned aircraft, which must perform assigned missions in coordinated cooperation with all mission aircraft.The control system must feature the ability to adaptively respond to losses during the mission, such that degraded communications or destruction of aircraft generate new allocations of responsibilities among mission members. A control system backbone inthe form of a hierarchical organizational structure of agent control modules simultaneously executing many layers of control and planning in real-time will be created. This will be accomplished by applying an advanced control system concept, called RCS(Real-time Control System), to the task of coordinated control of multiple unmanned air vehicles (UAVs). This organizational structure can carry out cooperative autonomous behavior in large groups of UAVs in various tactical situations. This controlsystem will exhibit varying autonomous capabilities, such as regrouping with losses, reallocation of resources, and reordering of priorities, while carrying out a variety of mission assignments including reconnaissance, searching, tracking, relaycommunications, target identification and navigational guidance. Autonomous vehicles including land vehicles, aircraft, and undersea vehicles, have demonstrated many advantages over manned vehicles.