Unmanned aircraft system coordination for persistent surveillance with different priorities

Abstract

This paper presents an unmanned aircraft system to coordinate a team of small aerial vehicles in area coverage monitoring, applied for persistent surveillance missions. In this task, the sensed region needs to be continually revisited and has dynamic interest priorities that require control interactions, both in mission planning and execution. The proposed system uses an approach based on a priority gradient combined with region partitioning, where the point of greatest interest is most frequently updated. Furthermore, the proposed system architecture is based on the coordination of embedded robotic agents, creating a flying ad hoc network composed of three modules: (a) ground control station, for mission planning and control through user interaction; (b) quadrotors team, capable of navigation by inertial sensors and global navigation satellite system; and, (c) control agents embedded in aircrafts, responsible for communications, task allocation and payload mission control. The objective is a system architecture design that enables a single operator to control a team of small unmanned aircrafts through a high-level supervision of dynamic mission control. To validate preliminary results, this paper shows a software-in-the-loop simulation for a fleet of three virtual aircrafts, connected to a real ground control station that receives vehicle telemetry.