Multiple Vehicle Team Tasking for Cooperative Estimation

A methodology for cooperating multiple vehicles in a reconnaissance problem is proposed. A team of vehicles is used in surveying multiple targets potentially at different priority levels. The overall objective is to minimize the uncertainty on locations of targets using cooperative estimation in minimum time. Because the performance of the estimation highly depends on trajectories of observers, optimal path planning trajectories are naturally integrated in the problem. Uncertainties include planning in the presence of ellipsoidal obstacles. The relationship between locations of vehicles and estimator performance is investigated. A fast algorithm for team selection is proposed to make it applicable for an on-line application.