A multi-UAV mission planning videogame-based framework for player analysis

The problem of Mission Planning for a large number of Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) comprises a set of locations to visit in different time windows, and the actions that the vehicle can perform based on its features, such as sensors, speed or fuel consumption. Although this problem is increasingly more supported by Artificial Intelligence systems, nowadays human factors are still critical to guarantee the success of the designed plan. Studying and analyzing how humans solve this problem is sometimes difficult due to the complexity of the problem and the lack of data available. To overcome this problem, we have developed an analysis framework for Multi-UAV Cooperative Mission Planning Problem (MCMPP) based on a videogame that gamifies the problem and allows a player to design plans for multiple UAVs intuitively. On the other hand, we have also developed a mission planner algorithm based on Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs) and solved with a Multi-Objective Branch & Bound (MOBB) method which optimizes the objective variables of the problem and gets the best solutions in the Pareto Optimal Frontier (POF). To prove the environment potential, we have performed a comparative study between the plans generated by a heterogenous group of human players and the solutions obtained by this planner.