Self-organizing strategy design and validation forintegrated air-ground detection swarm

A self-organized integrated air-ground detection swarmis tentatively applied to achieve reentry vehicle landing detection,such as searching and rescuing a manned spaceship. The detectionswarm consists of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles （UAVs）and unmanned ground vehicles （UGVs）. The UAVs can accessa detected object quickly for high mobility, while the UGVs cancomprehensively investigate the object due to the variety of carriedequipment. In addition, the integrated air-ground detectionswarm is capable of detecting from the ground and the air simultaneously.To accomplish the coordination of the UGVs andUAVs, they are all regarded as individuals of the artificial swarm.Those individuals make control decisions independently of othersbased on the self-organizing strategy. The overall requirements forthe detection swarm are analyzed, and the theoretical model ofthe self-organizing strategy based on a combined individual andenvironmental virtual function is established. The numerical investigationproves that the self-organizing strategy is suitable andscalable to control the detection swarm. To further inspect the engineeringreliability, an experiment set is established in laboratory,and the experimental demonstration shows that the self-organizingstrategy drives the detection swarm forming a close range and multiangularsurveillance configuration of a landing spot.