SUAAVE: Sensing Unmanned Autonomous Aerial VEhicles

SUAAVE联盟是计算机科学和工程领域的跨学科小组。它的重点是创造和控制成群的直升机无人机（无人机），这些无人机可以自主操作（即不受人类的直接实时控制），协作感知环境，并将其发现报告给地面的基站。这种直升机云（或群或群）在民用和军事领域都有广泛的应用。例如，考虑一个紧急事件，其中一个人在偏远地区失踪。搜索和救援服务迅速部署了大量廉价、自主、便携式直升机无人机。无人机配备了传感器设备（包括热敏相机和标准视频），无线电通信能力和GPS。无人机的任务是搜索可能遥远或无法到达的特定区域，从那时起，它们就完全自主-它们将自己组织成搜索的最佳配置，如果无人机丢失或损坏，它们会重新配置，它们会咨询实际寻找的潜在目标的概率，并将其结果报告给地面控制器。在给定的高度，无人机可能会超出基地的无线电范围，它们不仅可以感知环境，还可以向基地返回感兴趣的数据。同样的无人机也可能被用来连接地面搜索队之间的通信。对于可快速部署的、高生存能力的UAV云，存在各种各样的其他应用，包括例如污染监测;化学/生物/放射性武器羽流监测;灾难恢复-例如（洪水）损害评估;狙击手定位;在特定情况下的通信桥接;以及为了收集数据而飞越传感器场。这些移动的传感器系统的新奇之处在于，它们的运动由完全自主的任务算法控制，具有两个重要目标：第一，增加传感覆盖范围以快速识别目标;第二，保持网络连接，以实现无人机和地面机组人员之间的实时通信。该项目有四个主要的科学主题：㈠无线联网，应用于无人机可以自由移动的三个方向的可控自由空间传输环境; ㈡控制理论，应用于飞行器，目的是创造真正自主的代理人，这些代理人可以承担任务，但不需要真实的时间内的人在回路控制来操作和通信;（iii）应用于真实的搜索问题的人工智能和最优化理论;（iv）应用于构造和向情况指挥官呈现精确信息的来自多个、可能是异质的机载传感器的数据融合。SUAAVE项目将采用实用的工程方法，与一系列令人印象深刻的外部合作伙伴一起建造真实的原型，其中包括一个政府机构，该领域的行业领导者和两个国际合作者。

The SUAAVE consortium is an interdisciplinary group in the fields of computer science and engineering. Its focus is on the creation and control of swarms of helicopter UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) that operate autonomously (i.e not under the direct realtime control of a human), that collaborate to sense the environment, and that report their findings to a base station on the ground.Such clouds (or swarms or flocks) of helicopters have a wide variety of applications in both civil and military domains. Consider, for example, an emergency scenarion in which an individual is lost in a remote area. A cloud of cheap, autonomous, portable helicopter UAVs is rapidly deployed by search and rescue services. The UAVs are equipped with sensor devices (including heat sensitive cameras and standard video), wireless radio communication capabilities and GPS. The UAVs are tasked to search particular areas that may be distant or inaccessible and, from that point are fully autonomous - they organise themselves into the best configuration for searching, they reconfigure if UAVs are lost or damaged, they consult on the probability of a potential target being that actually sought, and they report their findings to a ground controller. At a given height, the UAVs may be out of radio range of base, and they move not only to sense the environment, but also to return interesting data to base. The same UAVs might also be used to bridge communications between ground search teams. A wide variety of other applications exist for a cloud of rapidly deployable, highly survivable UAVs, including, for example, pollution monitoring; chemical/biological/radiological weapons plume monitoring; disaster recovery - e.g. (flood) damage assessment; sniper location; communication bridging in ad hoc situations; and overflight of sensor fields for the purposes of collecting data. The novelty of these mobile sensor systems is that their movement is controlled by fully autonomous tasking algorithms with two important objectives: first, to increase sensing coverage to rapidly identify targets; and, second, to maintain network connectivity to enable real-time communication between UAVs and ground-based crews. The project has four main scientific themes: (i) wireless networking as applied in a controllable free-space transmission environment with three free directions in which UAVs can move; (ii) control theory as applied to aerial vehicles, with the intention of creating truly autonomous agents that can be tasked but do not need a man-in-the-loop control in real time to operate and communicate; (iii) artificial intelligence and optimisation theory as applied to a real search problem; (iv) data fusion from multiple, possibly heterogeneous airborne sensors as applied to construct and present accurate information to situation commanders. The SUAAVE project will adopt a practical engineering approach, building real prototypes in conjunction with an impressive list of external partners, including a government agency, the field's industry leaders, and two international collaborators.