Integrated task assignment and maintenance recommendation based on system architecture and PHM information for UAVs

PHM (Prognostics and Health Monitoring) can be defined as the capability of assessing the health condition, forecasting impending failures and the expected RUL (Remaining Useful Life) of a component based on a set of measurements collected from systems. Additionally, an important concept that could stem from PHM is IVHM (Integrate Vehicle Health Management); that is the unified capability of integrating PHM within a framework of available resources and operational demand. Therefore, this work aims to integrate task assignment and maintenance recommendation, both based on PHM information, for UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) Swarm. Task assignment is the problem of assigning a vehicle to a task. This paper uses a PHM-based task assignment solution; this solution takes into account mission time, task priority and vehicle´s health condition. Maintenance recommendation is the operation of defining which component should receive maintenance action, using an algorithm that takes into account PHM information, system architecture and safety margins. Both task assignment and maintenance recomendations take advantage of a combination of PHM information and system architecture to compute the UAV´s health condition, referred as S-RUL (System Level Remaining Useful Life). The S-RUL provides information related to the time when the whole system will stop working. In the case study, a simplified pitch control system is used to illustrate the application of the proposed method to UAVs Swarm.