Collaborative Research: Safe Coordination of Multiple Autonomous Vehicles

该项目的重点是开发安全协调的方法，在各种物理，防撞和信息的限制存在的情况下，完成多个任务的多个车辆组。安全协调是车辆完成的前提吗？个人和团体的目标，而从来没有违反整体多车辆系统？s安全。如果能够保证车辆之间以及车辆与静态物体之间不发生碰撞，则认为多辆车辆的协调是安全的。个体和群体目标是基于许多应用来定义的，这些应用包括监视和侦察、移动的传感器网络的控制、使用移动的机器人对静态对象的操纵、以及空中和公路交通控制等。该项目的主要交付成果是提供方法，将导致可实施的控制法律的各种车辆的安全，运动和通信的限制存在的协调。理论结果将在一些实验车辆平台上进行测试。成功完成这个项目的好处是多方面的。为地面和空中交通法规以及无人驾驶车辆群的众多应用提供安全协调法律的影响至关重要，首先是所涉人员的安全。其好处还包括避免碰撞而降低成本，以及通过假设真实模型使用自动驾驶车辆组实现期望目标的可靠性。研究生和本科生将受益于调查的问题，理论上具有挑战性的许多有用的应用机会。将向K-12学生展示使用多个自主机器人的演示，以便向他们介绍工程作为一种职业可以提供的令人兴奋的机会。

The focus of the project is on developing methods for safe coordination of groups of multiple vehicles accomplishing multiple tasks in the presence of a variety of physical, collision avoidance, and informational constraints. Safe coordination assumes the accomplishment of the vehicles? individual and group goals while never violating the overall multi-vehicle system?s safety. Coordination of multiple vehicles is considered safe if there is a guarantee of no collisions between the vehicles and between the vehicles and static objects. The individual and group goals are defined based on numerous applications including surveillance and reconnaissance, control of mobile sensor networks, manipulation of static objects using mobile robots, and air and highway traffic control, to name a few. The main deliverable of this project is to provide methodologies that would lead to implementable control laws for coordination of a variety of vehicles in the presence of safety, motion, and communication constraints. The theoretical results will be tested on a number of experimental vehicle platforms. The benefits of successfully accomplishing this project are numerous. Implications of providing safe coordination laws for ground and air traffic regulations as well as for numerous applications of groups of unmanned vehicles are of crucial importance, the first and the foremost being the safety of humans involved. The benefits also include a decrease in cost due to collision avoidance and the reliability of accomplishing desired goals using groups of autonomous vehicles by assuming realistic models. Graduate and undergraduate students would benefit from investigating problems that are theoretically challenging with many useful application opportunities. Demonstrations using multiple autonomous robots will be presented to K-12 students in order to introduce them to exciting opportunities that engineering as a profession can offer.