Agent-based mission management for a UAV

This article reports on the design, implementation and testing of a mission management system for a small, electric powered UAV - the Codarra Avatar. The system was designed and implemented using the agent-programming paradigm. which is a powerful, scalable and flexible framework for building autonomous systems. Specifically, we have used the JACK intelligent agent programming language. The system was integrated with an existing autopilot and auto-stabilisation system that performs basic flight control on the UAV. The mission management system performs without any human intervention, and represents a step forward in UAV autonomy. The use of agents as the design and development platform is particularly useful in view of future work, involving teams, or perhaps swarms, of UAV. Two agent designs inspired by different design principles are described and compared. The simulation and actual flight tests are also discussed. In addition to the experimental report, we provide a short conceptual discourse on autonomous agent and multi-agent systems, and how the proposed frameworks and concepts can apply to multi-UAV control.