Simulation design and performance analysis of multiple UAVs supervisory control system

Despite the absence of a crew onboard any of UAVs, human operators are still needed for supervisory control. Although UAV systems are currently controlled by a team of people, in the future increased automation could allow single operator to supervise multiple UAVs. The levels of autonomy for UAV are described in detail. Then a queuing-based multiple unmanned aerial vehicle discrete event simulation model is established. By defining wait times and operator utilization, the criterions are built to quantitatively evaluate system performance. The impact of dynamic function allocation on system performance is studied. Finally simulations validate that dynamic function allocation can effectively shorten the wait times, and eventually enhance the system performance.