Semester

Spring

Date of Graduation

2004

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

College

Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources

Department

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Committee Chair

Marcello Napolitano.

Abstract

Developing autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) reduces the risks to which soldiers are subjected by enabling the UAVs to make efficient decisions, regardless of the situation. This requires each group of UAVs to be proficient in planning their own paths and assigning tasks in a way that minimizes the total cost of the mission. Two methods are presented for doing this, the partially decoupled approach and the combined approach. After comparing two methods, the partially decoupled approach costs an average of 3.0 meters less than the combined approach, while taking an average of 0.327 seconds longer to complete. This indicates that the partially decoupled method should be chosen if the main concern is the cost of the mission and the combined approach should be chosen if computational time is the main concern.

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