Investigations of DDDAS for command and control of UAV swarms with agent-based modeling

Abstract

The application of Dynamic Data Driven Application Systems (DDDAS) to the command and control of swarms of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is being investigated. Swarm intelligent systems are not only efficient at solving group-level problems, but also decentralized, controllable by few simple parameters, making possible the command and control of UAV swarms by a single operator. Four separate but related projects are surveyed that explore the command and control of UAV swarms. Each project employs the DDDAS paradigm, entailing the ability of an executing application to incorporate dynamic data into the decision process, and conversely, to steer the measurement process via a central application system. By providing an overview of DDDAS approaches to UAV swarm mission scheduling, UAV swarm communication, UAV swarm formation planning, and flocking applications, general principles of UAV swarms and DDDAS architecture may be observed.