Complexity in UAV cooperative control

This paper addresses complexity and coupling issues in cooperative decision and control of distributed autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) teams. In particular, the recent results obtained by the inhouse research team are presented. Hierarchical decomposition is implemented where team vehicles are allocated to sub-teams using the set partition theory. Results are presented for single assignment and multiple assignments using the network flow and auction algorithms. Simulation results are presented for wide area search munitions where complexity and coupling are incrementally addressed in the decision system, yielding a radically improved team performance.