Controlling a team of unmanned underwater vehicles performing water region search tasks

Abstract

are to be discussed, including communication between the vehicles, coordination of actions, performing negotiations, and many others.The computer sciences make more and more frequent use of multi-agent systems, especially to solve problems of distributed nature, or those requiring complicated calculations. The multiagent system comprises a number of agents which communicate and cooperate with each other to perform a common task. The mechanism of the multi-agent system can be easily adopted to control the team of cooperating underwater vehicles in which each vehicle is treated as an individual agent.Below presented is a concept of a multi-agent system which was used to perform a task of water region search by a team of cooperating underwater vehicles. The team is assumed to consist of homogeneous and cable-free underwater vehicles equipped with instruments for navigation, technical observation and communication used for data exchange between the vehicles. The underwater vehicles have docking stations situated at one point of the water region, where they can load their internal energy sources, transmit the collected data and receive commands to start work. The shape of the searched water region is defined by the vertexes of the polygon enclosing the region. The water region is divided by the superior system into areas, each of which is to be searched by a single ABSTRACT The article discusses a problem of performing a mission and controlling a team of unmanned underwater vehicles which perform a task of water region search. The team of underwater vehicles has been modelled as a multi-agent system, which made it possible to use the mechanism of multi-agent systems for controlling the team of cooperating underwater vehicles, with each vehicle being treated as an individual agent. Solutions to cooperation problems in multi-agent systems were proposed, including the presentation of the system structure and the data exchange method. Issues relating to cooperation actions in the team of underwater vehicles were described and solved using the theory of games and the vector quality index. The process of negotiations between the vehicles was modelled as the multiplayer cooperative game, which secured successful realisation of the task performed by the team of vehicles with respect to time

A Concept of Autonomous Multi-Agent Navigation System for Unmanned Surface Vessels

“…Assumed agent architecture and control flow is shown in Figure 3 [25,32]. The algorithms related to detecting obstacles are included in the layer of reflex action.…”

Control of Unmanned Underwater Vehicle as a Member of Vehicles Team Performing a Given Task

“…Let S={s 1 ,s 2 ,…} mean possible environmental conditions and A={a 1 , a 2 ,…} possible agent actions. While making a formal description of the agent's operation, it can be noted that the action can be treated as a function (Gnatowski, 2005;Weiss, 1999;Zak, 2013a):…”

“…According to the adopted structure, the algorithms related to detecting obstacles are implemented in the layer of reflex action as well as algorithms related to maintaining the course and speed of movement (Garus & Zak, 2010;Zak, 2016). The planning layer implements algorithms related to driving the vehicle along a set trajectory, including determining the trajectory of obstacle avoiding (Lisowski, 2016;Zak 2013a). At the level of cooperation, the vehicle exchanges data with other team members and also conducts negotiations in the event of damage to any of the vehicles and the need to undertake a substitute task (Lisowski, 2013).…”

“…Since communication between vehicles is most often carried out in water using hydro-modems, in the situation of a common transmission media token ring mechanism can be used. In the case of winning negotiation by a given agent, its trajectory is automatically extended by a part that was taken over as a substitute task (Zak, 2013a). Figures 2 and 3 present the algorithm of operation of a single agent in the scope of cooperative activities, which should ensure the performance of the task in cooperation with other agents, i.e.…”

Optimization Methods in Maritime Transport and Logistics

“…In many issues of transport and logistics there are many possible and acceptable solutions to the problem, of which only one is the optimal solution under the assumed criterion of the quality of the transport or logistics process [14,15,16].…”