A Hardware-in-the-loop Dddams System for Crowd Surveillance via Unmanned Vehicles

Recent advancements in small unmanned vehicles and their capability in collecting dynamic data using onboard sensors make them key players in a wide variety of applications such as mapping, monitoring, search, and rescue. Specifically, monitoring in the border environments using unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) is the focus of this research work. In this regard, we design, develop, and demonstrate a simulation-based planning and control system for surveillance and crowd control via collaborative operation of UAVs and UGVs through three phases. At the first phase, a dynamic data driven adaptive multi-scale simulation (DDDAMS)-based planning and control framework is designed and developed. Next, in the second phase a testbed is implemented using agent-based hardware-in-the loop simulation. Finally at the phase three, using the developed framework and testbed in previous phases, different control architectures as well as UAV and UGV team formation are addressed.