Adaptive Self-Management of Teams of Autonomous Vehicles
Eskindir Asmare, Anandha Gopalan,
Morris Sloman, Naranker Dulay and
Emil Lupu
Abstract:
Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly deployed for
missions that are deemed dangerous or impractical to perform by humans
in many military and disaster scenarios. Collaborating UAVs in a team
form a Self-Managed Cell (SMC) with at least one commander. UAVs in an
SMC may need to operate independently or in sub-groups, out of contact
with the commander and the rest of the team in order to
perform specific tasks, but must still be able to eventually synchronise
state information. The SMC must also cope with intermittent and
permanent communication failures as well permanent UAV failures. This paper
describes a failure management scheme that copes with both communication
link and UAV failures, which may result in temporary disjoint
sub-networks within the SMC. A communication management protocol is
proposed to control UAVs performing disconnected individual operations,
while maintaining the SMC's structure by trying to ensure that all
members of the mission regardless of destination or task, can
communicate by moving UAVs to act as relays or by allowing the UAVs to
rendezvous at intermittent intervals.