Centralized Cooperative Control for Route Surveillance With Constant Communication

摘要

The route surveillance (RS) mission is a new application of unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) to meet the reconnaissance and surveillance needs of combatant commanders. This mission intends to field a four-vehicle UAS that can provide surveillance of convoy routes. This research focuses on developing a solution strategy based on the application of optimal control and cooperative control theory. The RS controller uses the UAS team size to divide the route into sectors for each entity. A specialized cost function and path constraints are used to formulate an optimal control problem that minimizes revisit time to the route and overall control energy of the UAS. The problem complexity makes an analytical solution difficult, so a numerical technique based on the Gauss pseudospectral method is used to solve for the optimal solution. The output trajectories represent paths that the UAS could try to provide constant surveillance. Simulated and real-world routes containing likely urban and rural characteristics are used to test the controller and show that the developed system provides feasible solutions under certain conditions.