Decision making in multi-UAVs systems: Architecture and algorithms

Abstract

This chapter depicts an architecture that aims at designing a multi-UAV framework enabling cooperative operations in a system in which some UAVs are directly controlled by an operator, others are only endowed with operational autonomy, and others have decisional autonomy capacities. The architecture provides with the possibility to configure dynamically the decisional scheme, depending on the available robots and on the operational context. A taxonomy of robots decisional autonomy is introduced, and used as a foundation to state the proposed architecture. The various functionalities on-board each robot are organized among a repartition that exhibits on-board functional components, and on-board or on-ground generic executive and decision making processes. A set of algorithms that fulfill the three main decision-making functionalities required in a multi-robot system are then presented: a contract-net protocol that can handle task allocation for complex multi-UAV missions, a planning scheme based on a Hierarchical Task Networks planner completed with plan-refiners that consider the actual domain models, and an executive system that handles the coordination and task execution issues. © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.