Contemplating Urban Operations Involving a UGV Swarm

Recent technological advancements enabled the development of different-size unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) to support a variety of disaster-relief and combat missions. While these systems are to be used in small numbers with no coordination or even awareness of each other in most cases, some applications could benefit from utilizing (smaller-size) UGVs in quantities, featuring a swarming behavior. Among these possible applications are operations in an urban area, which due to its complexity represents a challenging multidimensional environment for ground warfare. This paper presents guidance strategies for a search and destroy mission developed for some generic UGV swarms; and through a series of computer simulations evaluates their feasibility and effectiveness in executing such a mission in indoor as well as outdoor urban environments. The developed simulation allows varying many mission parameters, thus enabling a high degree of authenticity in terms of modeling a variety of real-world situations when different environments, platforms, sensors, and weapons are used. As such, this simulation environment maybe used as a tool, assisting in choosing key mission parameters to maximize the outcome of potential future engagements.