Persistent Coverage by Autonomous UV Swarms

As unmanned, distributed systems have revolutionized warfare, methods to control them with minimal human effort have become crucial. This requirement is particularly urgent when swarms of unmanned vehicles (UVs) are employed for a continuing mission, such as persistent area surveillance. This project will leverage existing optimization methods developed by Daniel H. Wagner Associates (DHWA) to meet this requirement. This work addresses multiple degrees of autonomy for UVs. In the first case, optimization performed before the mission begins provides a sequence of waypoints and speeds for the UVs, which then autonomously execute this mission plan. In this scenario, the UVs send data to an operator unit controller (OUC), which coordinates a reaction to UV detections by other assets. In a second case, the UVs themselves react to detections. This includes a swarm of UVs, which may react to a detection made by any of its members.