UAV team decision and control using efficient collaborative estimation

A novel decision-estimation architecture for a team of agents cooperating under communication imperfections is presented. The scenario of interest is that of a group of uninhabited aerial vehicles performing cooperative task assignment under communication delays. In the proposed architecture, each UAV in the group runs multiple filters in parallel on: its own states, teammates´ states, and its states as viewed by teammates. The estimation of team members´ states allows each UAV to synchronize the transmitted cost of performing known tasks, obtained from the different group members, to a common time base. It also enables estimating the expected cost for teammates to prosecute new tasks. Thus, the group performance, under communication imperfections, can be improved. For the estimation, two different algorithms are proposed. The first is communication efficient in which asynchronous information updates are sent to the network by individual members based on the value of the information to the rest of the group. Taking into account that the plan and plant of each UAV are known to the rest of the group, improves the overall estimation process. Moreover, it allows proposing another, computationally efficient, estimation algorithm utilizing synchronous information updates.