On multi-UAV scheduling for human operator target identification

Andres E. Ortiz, Cédric Langbort

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

We address the problem of a single human operator in charge of monitoring multiple UAVs in a reconnaissance mission. The human operator must classify targets as they appear on video feeds from the various aircraft as friends or foes. We introduce the idea of the human monitoring a single screen and a decision aid that automatically selects the video feed to be displayed on that screen. In this setting and given that the location of the targets is unknown and decision must be made in real time, the challenge here addressed is the development of a scheduling strategy which queues the video feeds in such a way that no target is missed and all targets are looked at for a specified amount of time. We present a Linear Programming (LP) formulation to this problem for the simple case of two UAVs and two equidistant targets. We develop an online algorithm that uses this LP as a building block to be applied to the more general case of multiple non-equidistant targets. We further show that in order to guarantee the feasibility of the scheduling strategy and ensure that no targets are missed it is sufficient to enforce a lower bound on the distance between targets.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 2011 American Control Conference, ACC 2011
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages1837-1842
Number of pages6
ISBN (Print)9781457700804
DOIs
StatePublished - 2011

Publication series

NameProceedings of the American Control Conference
ISSN (Print)0743-1619

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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