Maximizing Persistent Coverage of a Predetermined Area of Interest by Swarms of Assets for Targets Acquisition and Engagement

Unmanned Autonomous Systems (UAS) have reached a level of maturity where it is viable to deploy them tactically in order to support soldiers in complex, adversarial environments. The full value of UAS will be achieved when many of them can be deployed in autonomous cooperation under the control of a single operator. Our solution to this problem is the Persistent UNmanned Team (PUNT). The key to PUNT is a generic, formally grounded teamwork layer underlying mission-specific, persistent surveillance algorithms. The underlying teamwork ensures the continuous effective behavior of the team, gracefully handling routine communication, individual failures, battery recharge and other aspects of teamwork that must occur independent of the mission being performed. On top of the generic coordination, mission specific algorithms and team-oriented plans direct the team to the current mission. The combination of generic coordination and specialized distributed algorithms provide a robust and efficient way of completing the mission. The result will be an end-to-end working system, featuring scalable algorithms, practical software and mature user interfaces. We will demonstrate PUNT on flying vehicles early in Phase II, allowing significant time for algorithms to be improved and matured for real world tactical needs.