Hierarchical distributed control for search and tracking by heterogeneous aerial robot networks

Abstract—This paper presents a hierarchical control architecture that enables cooperative surveillance by a heterogeneous aerial robot network comprised of mothership unmanned aircraft and daughtership micro air vehicles. Combining the endurance, range, and processing capabilities of the motherships with the stealth, flexibility, and maneuverability of swarms of daughterships enables robust control of aerial robot networks conducting collaborative operations. The hierarchical control structure decomposes the system into components that take advantage of the abilities of the different types of vehicles. The motherships act as distributed databases, fusion centers, negotiation agents, and task supervisors while daughtership control is achieved using cooperative vector field tracking. This paper describes the overall arcitecture and then focuses on the assignment and tracking algorithms used once sub-teams of daughtership vehicles have been deployed. A summary of the communication, co...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ICRA
• Authors: Jack Elston, Eric W. Frew
• Keywords: Aerial Robot Networks, Control Architecture, Hierarchical Control, ICRA 2008, Robotics