Cooperative Target Tracking of Multiple Autonomous Surface Vehicles Under Switching Interaction Topologies

This paper is concerned with the cooperative target tracking of multiple autonomous surface vehicles(ASVs)under switching interaction topologies.For the target to be tracked,only its position can be measured/received by some of the ASVs,and its velocity is unavailable to all the ASVs.A distributed extended state observer taking into consideration switching topologies is designed to integrally estimate unknown target dynamics and neighboring ASVs'dynamics.Accordingly,a novel kinematic controller is designed,which takes full advantage of known information and avoids the approximation of some virtual control vectors.Moreover,a disturbance observer is presented to estimate unknown time-varying environmental disturbance.Furthermore,a distributed dynamic controller is designed to regulate the involved ASVs to cooperatively track the target.It enables each ASV to adjust its forces and moments according to the received information from its neighbors.The effectiveness of the derived results is demonstrated through cooperative target tracking performance analysis for a tracking system composed of five interacting ASVs.

MUTS-Based Cooperative Target Stalking for A Multi-USV System

This paper is concerned with the cooperative target stalking for a multi-unmanned surface vehicle(multi-USV)system.Based on the multi-agent deep deterministic policy gradient(MADDPG)algorithm,a multi-USV target stalking(MUTS)algorithm is proposed.Firstly,a V-type probabilistic data extraction method is proposed for the first time to overcome shortcomings of the MADDPG algorithm.The advantages of the proposed method are twofold:1)it can reduce the amount of data and shorten training time;2)it can filter out more important data in the experience buffer for training.Secondly,in order to avoid the collisions of USVs during the stalking process,an action constraint method called Safe DDPG is introduced.Finally,the MUTS algorithm and some existing algorithms are compared in cooperative target stalking scenarios.In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed MUTS algorithm in stalking tasks,mission operating scenarios and reward functions are well designed in this paper.The proposed MUTS algorithm can help the multi-USV system avoid internal collisions during the mission execution.Moreover,compared with some existing algorithms,the newly proposed one can provide a higher convergence speed and a narrower convergence domain.

Robust detection algorithm with triple constraints for cooperative target based on spectral residual

The accurate detection of cooperative targets plays a key and foundational role in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) landing autonomously. The standard method based on fixed threshold is too susceptible to both illumination variations and interference. To overcome issues above, a robust detection algorithm with triple constraints for cooperative targets based on spectral residual (TCSR) is proposed. Firstly, by designing an asymmetric cooperative target, which comprises red background, green H and triangle target, the captured original image is converted into a Lab color space, whose saliency map is yielded by constructing the spectral residual. Then, the triple constraints are developed according to the prior knowledge of the cooperative target. Finally, the salient region in saliency map is considered as the cooperative target, and it meets the triple constraints. Experimental results in complex environments show that the proposed TCSR outperforms the standard methods in higher detection accuracy and lower false alarm rate.

Automatic UAV Positioning with Encoded Sign as Cooperative Target

In order to achieve the goal that unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)automatically positioning during power inspection,a visual positioning method which utilizes encoded sign as cooperative target is proposed.Firstly,we discuss how to design the encoded sign and propose a robust decoding algorithm based on contour.Secondly,the Adaboost algorithm is used to train a classifier which can detect the encoded sign from image.Lastly,the position of UAV can be calculated by using the projective relation between the object points and their corresponding image points.Experiment includes two parts.First,simulated video data is used to verify the feasibility of the proposed method,and the results show that the average absolute error in each direction is below 0.02 m.Second,a video,acquired from an actual UAV flight,is used to calculate the position of UAV.The results show that the calculated trajectory is consistent with the actual flight path.The method runs at a speed of 0.153 sper frame.

Multi-UAV cooperative target tracking with bounded noise for connectivity preservation

We investigate cooperative target tracking of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)with a limited communication range.This is an integration of UAV motion control,target state estimation,and network topology control.We first present the communication topology and basic notations for network connectivity,and introduce the distributed Kalman consensus filter.Then,convergence and boundedness of the estimation errors using the filter are analyzed,and potential functions are proposed for communication link maintenance and collision avoidance.By taking stable target tracking into account,a distributed potential function based UAV motion controller is discussed.Since only the estimation of the target state rather than the state itself is available for UAV motion control and UAV motion can also affect the accuracy of state estimation,it is clear that the UAV motion control and target state estimation are coupled.Finally,the stability and convergence properties of the coupled system under bounded noise are analyzed in detail and demonstrated by simulations.

HEURISTIC PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM FOR AIR COMBAT DECISION-MAKING ON CMTA

Combining the heuristic algorithm （HA） developed based on the specific knowledge of the cooperative multiple target attack （CMTA） tactics and the particle swarm optimization （PSO）, a heuristic particle swarm optimization （HPSO） algorithm is proposed to solve the decision-making （DM） problem. HA facilitates to search the local optimum in the neighborhood of a solution, while the PSO algorithm tends to explore the search space for possible solutions. Combining the advantages of HA and PSO, HPSO algorithms can find out the global optimum quickly and efficiently. It obtains the DM solution by seeking for the optimal assignment of missiles of friendly fighter aircrafts （FAs） to hostile FAs. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is superior to the general PSO algorithm and two GA based algorithms in searching for the best solution to the DM problem.

HEURISTIC QUANTUM GENETIC ALGORITHM FOR AIR COMBAT DECISION MAKING ON COOPERATIVE MULTIPLE TARGET ATTACK

In order to achieve the optimal attack outcome in the air combat under the beyond visual range(BVR)condition,the decision-making(DM)problem which is to set a proper assignment for the friendly fighters on the hostile fighters is the most crucial task for cooperative multiple target attack(CMTA).In this paper,a heuristic quantum genetic algorithm(HQGA)is proposed to solve the DM problem.The originality of our work can be supported in the following aspects:(1)the HQGA assigns all hostile fighters to every missile rather than fighters so that the HQGA can encode chromosomes with quantum bits(Q-bits);(2)the relative successful sequence probability(RSSP)is defined,based on which the priority attack vector is constructed;(3)the HQGA can heuristically modify quantum chromosomes according to modification technique proposed in this paper;(4)last but not the least,in some special conditions,the HQGA gets rid of the constraint described by other algorithms that to obtain a better result.In the end of this paper,two examples are illustrated to show that the HQGA has its own advantage over other algorithms when dealing with the DM problem in the context of CMTA.

A Monocular Vision Measurement System of Three-Degree-of-Freedom Air-Bearing Test-Bed Based on FCCSP

A monocular vision-based pose measurement system is provided for real-time measurement of a three-degree-of-freedom （3-DOF） air-bearing test-bed. Firstly, a circular plane cooperative target is designed. An image of a target fixed on the test-bed is then acquired. Blob analysis-based image processing is used to detect the object circles on the target. A fast algorithm （FCCSP） based on pixel statistics is proposed to extract the centers of object circles. Finally, pose measurements can be obtained when combined with the centers and the coordinate transformation relation. Experiments show that the proposed method is fast, accurate, and robust enough to satisfy the requirement of the pose measurement.