Multi-agent planning for persistent missions with automated battery management

Joshua D. Redding, Tuna Toksozy, N. Kemal Ure, Alborz Geramifard, Jonathan P. How, Matthew A. Vavrina, John Vian

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This paper introduces and demonstrates a full hardware testbed for research in long-duration missions for multiple, autonomous agents. Specifically, we describe an automated battery management platform designed to service multiple quadrotor agents in the MIT RAVEN and Boeing VSTL flight environments. The changing/charging station allows the quadrotor's spent battery to be quickly swapped for a fresh one without requiring it to power down or wait for recharge - a significant benefit in persistent and/or time-critical missions. We focus on a multi-agent persistent search and track scenario and construct both centralized and decentralized MDP-based mission planners. We further show that for the three agent case, decentralized planners (one for each agent) offer a 99% reduction in computation time and only a relatively small (10%) degradation in overall mission performance when compared to the centralized approach over a long-term simulated mission.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference 2011
PublisherAmerican Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Inc.
ISBN (Print)9781600869525
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2011
Externally publishedYes
EventAIAA Guidance, Navigation and Control Conference 2011 - Portland, OR, United States
Duration: 8 Aug 201111 Aug 2011

Publication series

NameAIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference 2011

Conference

ConferenceAIAA Guidance, Navigation and Control Conference 2011
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityPortland, OR
Period8/08/1111/08/11

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