Real-time dynamic planning to maintain network connectivity in a team of unmanned air vehicles

As technology progresses, the capability provided by teams of unmanned systems will span all operational domains and become increasingly important in many applications. Teams of unmanned systems can be composed of agents with different capabilities, and must often operate in dynamic environments where the state of tasks is always changing. Effective real-time task allocation is paramount in these situations. Constraints on connectivity of a network of unmanned agents, such as those required to provide realtime remotely sensed data for exploitation, are a major challenge in this planning process. This paper presents the implementation of research performed to extend a real-time task planning approach called the Consensus Based Bundle Algorithm (CBBA), to include planning for communication relays when facing potential network disconnects. The paper implements the algorithm in a flight test experiment with a team of 3 UAVs performing observation tasks out of communication range from the base station. Results show that planning for relays can be performed in real-time and offers increased mission performance over the baseline CBBA algorithm.