Unmanned Air Vehicles

Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV's) are becoming a major focus of research, at both the governmental and private levels, because a variety of missions could be accomplished in an "autonomous" and cost-efficient fashion without putting human lives at stake. Some maneuvers that would be beyond the 9 g's limit of pilots could be afforded with an unmanned vehicle. Furthermore, with the advent of micro-UAV's (MUAV's), some reconnaissance, surveillance, and other urban missions that could never have been considered before are now becoming a reality.

Sizes of UAV's range from the 206' (247') wingspan Centurion (Helios) to palmtop, even postage stamp, micro-UAV's. The operating altitude varies from 80,000' (100,000') for the Centurion (Helios) to tree-top levels for micro-UAV's. The Reynolds number varies from 1,000,000 all the way down to 100. The airspeed varies from hypersonic for the X-33 to 0 for Rotary Unmanned Air Vehicles (RUAV's) in hovering. Clearly, UAV's cover a very broad range of configurations, parameters, flight envelopes, etc.

In many missions, UAV's fly in formation, for the strategic purpose of increasing the chances of at least one UAV reaching its target, or for the reconnaissance purpose of mapping the ground using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) principles. In the last application, there is a need to enforce a precise formation pattern. The specific purpose of this research is to develop a computational geometry control scheme to enforce a given formations of UAV's. Other spinoffs include the merger of two formations, the recovery of a formation after a disruption, etc.

For more information about this project, please contact Eric Vartio at vartier@mail.northgrum.com.

This research is financially supported by a gift of Northrop-Grumman to the USC School of Engineering.

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