Cooperative scheduling of tasks for networked uninhabited autonomous vehicles

In this paper we model a cooperative control problem for a network of UAVs where it is assumed that before the mission starts a set of tasks is given to a set of UAVs, but then after deployment the UAVs must cooperate to decide which UAV should process each task. The cooperation must occur in spite of imperfect communications (e.g., messages with random but bounded delays). We show how to view this as a cooperative scheduling (resource allocation) problem, and how to derive bounds on mission-level performance metrics for cooperative scheduling methods. Simulations will be used to compare the approach to a noncooperative strategy and to provide design guidelines for the cooperative scheduler.