Autonomous Control of Multiple UAVs for the Passive Location of Radars

This paper describes an algorithm that has been used for the autonomous control of multiple UAVs tasked with the high level objective of locating a radar subject to a number of real world constraints. The distributed, fully autonomous, cooperative control of the multiple UAV system was executed using sensor input from a heterogenous network of miniaturised Electronic Surveillance (ES) payloads. An ES sensor onboard one UAV detected a radar target and cross-cued ES receivers onboard two other UAVs. Based on the information shared between these UAVs the target radar was approximately located by each UAV Once the UAVs had coarsely located the target they autonomously, dynamically, and continuously adapted their flight trajectories to progressively improve the accuracy with which they were able to co-operatively locate the radar target. The UAVs were able to accurately locate the radar while simultaneously avoiding no-fly zones, one another and remaining within communication range.