Design Challenges for an Autonomous Cooperative of UAVs

The Defence Science & Technology Organisation (DSTO), which is part of the Australian Department of Defence, is developing a research capability that uses small, inexpensive, autonomous uninhabited air vehicles (UAVs) to detect, identify, target, track, and electronically engage ground-based targets such as radars. The UAVs, which act autonomously and cooperatively, use a geographically distributed and heterogenous mix of relatively unsophisticated electronic warfare (EW) sensors and other miniaturised payloads networked together to deliver a distributed situational awareness picture that can be shared across the command echelons. If the many design challenges are overcome, the cooperation and networking of these platforms and payloads could provide results superior to those of the significantly more expensive, platform-centric systems, but with the added advantage of robustness. This paper outlines the challenges relating to autonomy, supervision, and control that the developers face and reports on the development of DSTO's multi-UAV cooperative to date.