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

协同控制下的自主车辆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接的同时控制或优化系统的形成。 这样的系统也是潜在的攻击目标，因此保护通信和控制过程的技术是重要的。 在这个项目中，来自计算机网络的技术与控制技术相结合，以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，它还允许优化网络形成以提高联网通信的效率。 保护通信信号的新方法与变换系统的物理形式的能力相结合，以提供实现对窃听者安全且对敌对干扰鲁棒的通信的新方法。 该项目的成果将是新的算法，协议和控制技术，用于自动驾驶车辆系统的编队控制，比目前可用的技术更灵活，更有效，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，水面和水下车辆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.