NeTS: Small: Network Connectivity and Security for Cooperative Autonomous Vehicles

协同控制下的自动驾驶汽车系统为各种任务提供了多功能平台，包括环境监测、搜索和救援、智能交通以及协同监视或攻击。执行这些任务需要在保持网络连通性的同时控制或优化系统的形成。这些系统也是潜在的攻击目标，因此确保通信和控制过程安全的技术非常重要。在这个项目中，计算机网络技术与控制技术相结合，重新配置自动驾驶车辆系统的物理编队，同时通过将车辆“路由”到新的位置来保持网络连接。这种方法是一种使能技术，它还允许优化网络结构，以提高网络通信的效率。保护通信信号的新方法与改变系统物理结构的能力相结合，提供了实现通信的新方法，既可以防止窃听，又可以抵御敌对干扰。该项目的成果将为自动驾驶车辆系统的编队控制提供新的算法、协议和控制技术，这些技术将比现有技术更灵活、更高效、更安全。这些结果将广泛适用于未来的传感/监测、国土安全和涉及地面、空中、水面和水下航行器自主系统的防御行动。

Systems of autonomous vehicles under cooperative control provide versatile platforms for a variety of tasks including environmental monitoring, search and rescue, intelligent transportation, and cooperative surveillance or attack. Performing these tasks requires control or optimization of the system's formation while maintaining network connectivity. Such systems are also potential targets for attack, and so techniques to secure the communications and control processes are important. In this project, techniques from computer networks are coupled with controls techniques to reconfigure the physical formation of a system of autonomous vehicles while maintaining network connectivity by "routing" vehicles through the formation to new positions. This approach is an enabling technology that also allows the network formation to be optimized to increase the efficiency of networked communication. New approaches to securing communication signals are coupled with the ability to transform the physical formation of the system to provide new approaches to achieving communication that is secure against eavesdroppers and robust to hostile jamming. The results of this project will be new algorithms, protocols, and controls techniques for formation control of systems of autonomous vehicles that are more flexible, efficient, and secure than the techniques currently available. These results will be widely applicable to future sensing/monitoring, homeland security, and defense operations involving autonomous systems of ground, air, surface, and underwater vehicles.