As researchers strive to achieve autonomy in systems, many believe the goal is not that machines should attain full autonomy, but rather to obtain the right level of autonomy for an appropriate man-machine interaction. A common phrase for this interaction is manned-unmanned teaming, a subset of which, for unmanned aerial vehicles, is the concept of the loyal wingman. Previous works established a definition and candidate scenario, demonstrated a methodology, formulated the optimal control problem, and developed dynamic and measurement update models for avoiding moving, stochastic threats. The work herein extends upon previous work by formulating the optimal control problem for a scenario more consistent with manned-unmanned teaming. Additional technical information is provided for appropriately modeling the moving, stochastic threats and a critical distance metric is developed to recommend when the loyal wingman's optimal path should be updated, using speed and stochastics of the moving threat as well as relative distance and angle of approach of the loyal wingman to the threat. These techniques are demonstrated through simulation for computing the global outer-loop optimal path for a minimum time rendezvous with a manned lead while avoiding static as well as moving, non-deterministic threats, then updating the global outer-loop optimal path based on changes in the threat mission environment Results demonstrate a methodology for rapidly computing an optimal solution to the loyal wingman optimal control problem.
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