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Completed TRL 2 (started at 1, targeting 2)
Autonomous formation flight of multiple air vehicles has the potential of significantly increasing airspace utilization as well as fuel efficiency. In other areas, autonomous multi-agent control strategies are being investigated to optimally perform common tasks. A 'formation' may be generically considered as an optimal arrangement of networked agents to maximize some measure of performance (such as system throughput in airspace or communication networks). This research aims to investigate and propose solutions to the main problems in autonomous cooperative control of multi-vehicle systems, including optimal role assignment, mobility control laws, and inter-agent relationship
The theory and methods developed will have broad applicability to air vehicles, multi-spacecraft coordination, large-scale communication-, traffic-, power-, and sensor-networks.
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