Flocks, herds and schools: A distributed behavioral model
SIGGRAPH '87 Proceedings of the 14th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques
Group Behaviors for Systems with Significant Dynamics
Autonomous Robots
Autonomous Robots: From Biological Inspiration to Implementation and Control (Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents)
Hi-index | 0.01 |
The importance of local intervention capability for the assertion of Canadian Sovereignty in the Northwest Passage is recognized. However, Canada lacks the ability to deploy, on demand, assets to search a wide area for rescue or surveillance purposes in the North. This fact motivated our investigation of the feasibility of a rapid intervention system based on a carrier-scouts design in which a number of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) would be transported, air launched and recovered by a carrier aircraft. These UAVs would have the ability to self-organize in formations that correspond to the task at hand. When searching for a target, they would fly in a linear pattern so that the search area swept per hour and the probability of detecting the target would be considerably increased. A 1973 report by the Tactical Combat Aircraft Programs of the Boeing Aerospace Company for the US Air Force [15] and a 2007 thesis by Chalamont [6] indicate that airborne launch and recovery of many UAVs from a carrier aircraft is feasible and requires only already existing technology. We propose here a solution to the remaining problem of managing simultaneously the many UAVs that are required by the vastness of the areas to be surveyed, with a minimum number of human controllers and communications. Namely, we present algorithms for the self-organization of the UAVs in the required formations. These allow for surveillance operations during which close-up images would be acquired of activities in a region of interest, and searching an area for assets in distress and providing a visual presence for such. We reach the conclusion that our proposed local intervention system with flocking UAVs is feasible and would provide a valuable asset for asserting Canadian Sovereignty in the North.