Multi-vehicle Collaboration with Minimal Communications and Minimal Energy

Orbit Logic,the University of Colorado, and the University of California are developing a hierarchical autonomous mission planning and response capability for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) to address the challenges associated with long duration operations. The research is innovating approaches to the exchange of information between collaborating vehicles enabling onboard decision-making to perform effectively despite communication limitations imposed by the underwater maritime environment. A novel decentralized data fusion approach is used to maintain the collective state awareness of a group of federated collaborating assets. This capability intelligently exchanges data (or strategically withholds data exchange) to minimize communications while maximizing knowledge. We also employ “resource ferrying” strategies to optimize collaborative operations for energy consumption. This technique, applicable to homogeneous or heterogeneous systems, has promise to significantly improve the overall effectiveness of long duration missions by intelligently distributing data and stored electrical energy. Finally, autonomous decision logic strategies leveraged from synergistic satellite autonomy research will overlay the data architecture. Research will be conducted to determine the most compact representation of asset information necessary to achieve robust, real-time adaptive mission performance.