In-stride Optimal Motion Planning/re-planning for MCM Missions using Optimization

NPS NRP Executive SummaryIn-stride Optimal Motion Planning/re-planning for MCM Missions using OptimizationN8 - Integration of Capabilities & ResourcesThis research is supported by funding from the Naval Postgraduate School, Naval Research Program (PE 0605853N/2098). https://nps.edu/nrpChief of Naval Operations (CNO)Approved for public release. Distribution is unlimited.

Modeling High Power Microwave Engagements Versus Swarming Adversaries

NPS NRP Executive SummaryHigh-power microwave (HPM) weapons use electromagnetic waves to neutralize electronic hardware, making them an ideal candidate to defeat drones. The effectiveness of HPM weapons is determined by their intensity, their spatial effect profile, and the mobility or spatial location of the HPM weapon platforms. NPS researchers have developed modeling approaches to perform mission-level studies of effects of such weapons, including determination of optimal tactics, determination of minimum platform specifications for mission success, and trade-off analysis between parameters.Office of Naval Research (ONR)ASN(RDA) - Research, Development, and AcquisitionThis research is supported by funding from the Naval Postgraduate School, Naval Research Program (PE 0605853N/2098). https://nps.edu/nrpChief of Naval Operations (CNO)Approved for public release. Distribution is unlimited.

Rapid Flight Control Prototyping - Steps Toward Cooperative Mission-Oriented Capabilities

The paper describes the latest advancements in the development of the Rapid Flight Control Prototyping system that were motivated primarily by the need to enable cooperative missions of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles and to enhance the capabilities of human operators to design and oversee the collaborative behaviors of multiple heterogeneous UAVs. The evolution of the system is driven by the mission level objectives and supported on one hand by the progress in miniature sensors, computational power, communication and portable energy technologies and on the other hand by the advanced capabilities of embedded control and communication-oriented software. As a result the developed system enables rapid design, onboard integration and in-flight verification of multiple UAV collaborative concepts that seemed impossible just a couple of years ago. Advantages of the designed system are illustrated by a couple of scenarios that were recently developed and verified in flight by multiple cooperating UAVs. The paper concentrates on presenting the motivation and the conceptual design ideas which drive the evolution of the flight prototyping platform.Evolution of RFCPS system has been funded in part by the National Air and Space Administration under Contracts NNX08BA64A, NNX08BA65A, NNX08AB97A, NNX08AC81A, and NNL08AA12I; ARO under Contract No.W911NF-06-1-0330, the USSOCOM/NPS Field Experimentation Cooperative, the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-05-1-0828

Clandestine Mine Countermeasures Optimization for Autonomy and Risk Assessment

NPS NRP Technical ReportThe PRC and Russia are the greatest miners in the world and are prepared to employ mines to tilt the Great Power Competition (GPC) in their favor. Mines are inexpensive, easily deployed, and put Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) at high-risk. Countering mines within acceptable risk levels and mission timelines is required to support DMO operational requirements. Although the development and integration of autonomous vehicles should improve DMO, research and development of new tools for optimizing distributed search effort are required to minimize risk to the force. These tools must consider the constraints placed on mine countermeasures (MCM) by the challenges of GPC. Today's MCM systems, for example, rely on surface and airborne assets, with associated force protection burdens required to establish and maintain a permissive environment. In the future, naval forces must be prepared to operate in contested environments where overt operations are denied and supporting technologies (GPS, communications, etc.) are severely limited. Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have potential to conduct clandestine MCM operations, but new approaches for conducting collaborative search with multiple AUVs are needed to fully realize their potential. Research is required to identify and assess new methods for conducting entirely clandestine MCM.N8 - Integration of Capabilities & ResourcesThis research is supported by funding from the Naval Postgraduate School, Naval Research Program (PE 0605853N/2098). https://nps.edu/nrpChief of Naval Operations (CNO)Approved for public release. Distribution is unlimited.

Clandestine Mine Countermeasures Optimization for Autonomy and Risk Assessment

NPS NRP Executive SummaryThe PRC and Russia are the greatest miners in the world and are prepared to employ mines to tilt the Great Power Competition (GPC) in their favor. Mines are inexpensive, easily deployed, and put Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) at high-risk. Countering mines within acceptable risk levels and mission timelines is required to support DMO operational requirements. Although the development and integration of autonomous vehicles should improve DMO, research and development of new tools for optimizing distributed search effort are required to minimize risk to the force. These tools must consider the constraints placed on mine countermeasures (MCM) by the challenges of GPC. Today's MCM systems, for example, rely on surface and airborne assets, with associated force protection burdens required to establish and maintain a permissive environment. In the future, naval forces must be prepared to operate in contested environments where overt operations are denied and supporting technologies (GPS, communications, etc.) are severely limited. Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have potential to conduct clandestine MCM operations, but new approaches for conducting collaborative search with multiple AUVs are needed to fully realize their potential. Research is required to identify and assess new methods for conducting entirely clandestine MCM.N8 - Integration of Capabilities & ResourcesThis research is supported by funding from the Naval Postgraduate School, Naval Research Program (PE 0605853N/2098). https://nps.edu/nrpChief of Naval Operations (CNO)Approved for public release. Distribution is unlimited.

Consistent numerical methods for state and control constrained trajectory optimisation with parameter dependency

The article of record as published may be found at https://doi.org/10.1080/00207179.2020.1717633This paper describes and proves the consistency of a flexible numerical method for producing solutions to state and control constrained control problems with parameter dependencies. This method allows for the use of a variety of underlying discretisation schemes, which can be catered to differing numerical chal- lenges of specific problems, such as rapid convergence or large parameter spaces. The paper first provides a broad formulation for optimal control problems with parameter dependencies which includes multiple types of state, control, and end time constraints to enable a wide scope of application. For this formula- tion, the consistency of these methods for state and control constrained problems is then proved. Finally, a numerical example of an optimal search problem with constraints is demonstrated.This work was supported by Office of Naval Research [N001415WX01451, N001417WX01098, N001418WX01204].This work was supported by Office of Naval Research [N001415WX01451, N001417WX01098, N001418WX01204]

Design of integrated pitch axis for autopilot/autothrottle and integrated lateral axis for autopilot/yaw damper for NASA TSRV airplane using integral LQG methodology

Two designs are presented for control systems for the NASA Transport System Research Vehicle (TSRV) using integral Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) methodology. The first is an integrated longitudinal autopilot/autothrottle design and the second design is an integrated lateral autopilot/yaw damper/sideslip controller design. It is shown that a systematic top-down approach to a complex design problem combined with proper application of modern control synthesis techniques yields a satisfactory solution in a reasonable period of time

Coordinated Path Following of UAVs using Event-Triggered Communication over Time-Varying Networks with Digraph Topologies

In this article, a novel time-coordination algorithm based on event-triggered communications is proposed to achieve coordinated path-following of UAVs. To be specific, in the approach adopted a UAV transmits its progression information over a time-varying network to its neighbors only when a decentralized trigger condition is satisfied, thereby significantly reducing the volume of inter-vehicle communications required when compared with the existing algorithms based on continuous communications. Using such intermittent communications, it is shown that a decentralized coordination controller guarantees exponential convergence of the coordination error to a neighborhood of zero. Also, a lower bound on the interval between two consecutive event-triggered times is provided showing that the chattering issue does not arise with the proposed algorithm. Finally, simulation results validate the efficacy of the proposed algorithm.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2307.0655

Coordinated Path Following of UAVs over Time-Varying Digraphs Connected in an Integral Sense

This paper presents a new connectivity condition on the information flow between UAVs to achieve coordinated path following. The information flow is directional, so that the underlying communication network topology is represented by a time-varying digraph. We assume that this digraph is connected in an integral sense. This is a much more general assumption than the one currently used in the literature. Under this assumption, it is shown that a decentralized coordination controller ensures exponential convergence of the coordination error vector to a neighborhood of zero. The efficacy of the algorithm is confirmed with simulation results

Operational Planning Simulations of HPM-equipped Swarm Engagements

A Quad, describing CRUSER Seed Research Program funded research.CRUSER Funded ResearchFY22 Funded Research ProposalConsortium for Robotics and Unmanned Systems Education and Research (CRUSER