Cooperative control for multiple autonomous UAV´s searching for targets

The work presented here is in the area of decision and control for autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Specifically, we formulate the problem of generating near-optimal trajectories to follow in order for several UAVs to cooperatively search for targets in a given area for which some a priori data about target distribution is available. An algorithm that utilizes a model of the cooperation is developed and a dynamic programming implementation is presented as a solution to this problem. Results from simulations are provided to illustrate the usefulness of this approach.