Formulation of control strategies for requirement definition of multi-agent surveillance systems

Aksaray, Derya

Title:

Formulation of control strategies for requirement definition of multi-agent surveillance systems

dc.contributor.advisor	Mavris, Dimitri N.
dc.contributor.author	Aksaray, Derya
dc.contributor.committeeMember	Feron, Eric
dc.contributor.committeeMember	Shamma, Jeff S.
dc.contributor.committeeMember	Schrage, Daniel P.
dc.contributor.committeeMember	Griendling, Kelly
dc.contributor.department	Aerospace Engineering
dc.date.accessioned	2015-01-12T21:11:09Z
dc.date.available	2015-01-12T21:11:09Z
dc.date.created	2014-12
dc.date.issued	2014-08-21
dc.date.submitted	December 2014
dc.date.updated	2015-01-12T21:11:14Z
dc.description.abstract	In a multi-agent system (MAS), the overall performance is greatly influenced by both the design and the control of the agents. The physical design determines the agent capabilities, and the control strategies drive the agents to pursue their objectives using the available capabilities. The objective of this thesis is to incorporate control strategies in the early conceptual design of an MAS. As such, this thesis proposes a methodology that mainly explores the interdependency between the design variables of the agents and the control strategies used by the agents. The output of the proposed methodology, i.e. the interdependency between the design variables and the control strategies, can be utilized in the requirement analysis as well as in the later design stages to optimize the overall system through some higher fidelity analyses. In this thesis, the proposed methodology is applied to a persistent multi-UAV surveillance problem, whose objective is to increase the situational awareness of a base that receives some instantaneous monitoring information from a group of UAVs. Each UAV has a limited energy capacity and a limited communication range. Accordingly, the connectivity of the communication network becomes essential for the information flow from the UAVs to the base. In long-run missions, the UAVs need to return to the base for refueling with certain frequencies depending on their endurance. Whenever a UAV leaves the surveillance area, the remaining UAVs may need relocation to mitigate the impact of its absence. In the control part of this thesis, a set of energy-aware control strategies are developed for efficient multi-UAV surveillance operations. To this end, this thesis first proposes a decentralized strategy to recover the connectivity of the communication network. Second, it presents two return policies for UAVs to achieve energy-aware persistent surveillance. In the design part of this thesis, a design space exploration is performed to investigate the overall performance by varying a set of design variables and the candidate control strategies. Overall, it is shown that a control strategy used by an MAS affects the influence of the design variables on the mission performance. Furthermore, the proposed methodology identifies the preferable pairs of design variables and control strategies through low fidelity analysis in the early design stages.
dc.description.degree	Ph.D.
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/1853/53121
dc.language.iso	en_US
dc.publisher	Georgia Institute of Technology
dc.subject	Multi-agent systems
dc.subject	Persistent surveillance
dc.subject	Decentralized control
dc.subject	Connectivity maintenance
dc.subject	Design space exploration
dc.title	Formulation of control strategies for requirement definition of multi-agent surveillance systems
dc.type	Text
dc.type.genre	Dissertation
dspace.entity.type	Publication
local.contributor.advisor	Mavris, Dimitri N.
local.contributor.corporatename	Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering
local.contributor.corporatename	Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory (ASDL)
local.contributor.corporatename	College of Engineering
local.relation.ispartofseries	Doctor of Philosophy with a Major in Aerospace Engineering
relation.isAdvisorOfPublication	d355c865-c3df-4bfe-8328-24541ea04f62
relation.isOrgUnitOfPublication	a348b767-ea7e-4789-af1f-1f1d5925fb65
relation.isOrgUnitOfPublication	a8736075-ffb0-4c28-aa40-2160181ead8c
relation.isOrgUnitOfPublication	7c022d60-21d5-497c-b552-95e489a06569
relation.isSeriesOfPublication	f6a932db-1cde-43b5-bcab-bf573da55ed6
thesis.degree.level	Doctoral