Collaborative Mission and Route Planning of Multi-vehicle Systems for Autonomous Search in Marine Environment

• Published in: International journal of control, automation, and systems Vol. 18; no. 3; pp. 546 - 555
• Main Authors: Yoon, Sukmin, Do, Haggi, Kim, Jinwhan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bucheon / Seoul Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems and The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers 01.03.2020; Springer Nature B.V; 제어·로봇·시스템학회
• Subjects: Algorithms; Collaboration; Computer simulation; Control; Disasters; Emergency preparedness; Engineering; Environmental impact; Impact strength; Marine environment; Mechatronics; Mission planning; Oil spills; Robot and Applications; Robotics; Route planning; Searching; System effectiveness; Unmanned vehicles; Vehicles; 제어계측공학; task allocation-sharing and job design; fleet size optimization; mission planning and decision making; trajectory and path planning; Autonomous vehicles; multi-vehicle systems
• ISSN: 1598-6446; 2005-4092
• DOI: 10.1007/s12555-019-0666-4

As the impact and complexity of disasters, either natural or man-made, have increased, collaborative operation of a group of unmanned vehicles attracts much attention for effective response in disaster environments. In particular, mission planning is crucial for an effective collaboration of multiple heterogeneous vehicle systems. This study presents a mission planning algorithm and its application procedure in disaster situations. In general, disaster response missions such as search, rescue, and oil spill tracking are complicated in nature and come in various forms. Therefore, the mission needs to be broken down into simpler tasks that are more readily achievable to autonomous vehicles without human intervention. This study also presents a set of algorithms for efficient initial search and task allocation. The performance and feasibility of the proposed methodologies are evaluated with numerical simulations.