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Title: Threat-Aware Selection for Target Engagement
This paper investigates the scheduling problem related to engaging a swarm of attacking drones with a single defensive turret. The defending turret must turn, with a limited slew rate, and remain facing a drone for a dwell time to eliminate it. The turret must eliminate all the drones in the swarm before any drone reaches the turret. In 2D, this is an example of a Traveling Salesman Problem with Time Windows (TSPTW) where the turret must visit each target during the window. In 2D, the targets and turret are restricted to a plane and the turret rotates with one degree of freedom. In 3D, the turret can pan and tilt, while the drones attempt to reach a safe zone anywhere along the vertical axis above the turret. This 3D movement makes the problem more challenging, since the azimuth angles of the turret to the drones vary as a function of time. This paper investigates the theoretical optimal solution for simple swarm configurations. It compares heuristic approaches for the path scheduling problem in 2D and 3D using a simulation of the swarm behavior. It provides results for an improved heuristic approach, the Threat-Aware Nearest Neighbor.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1553063 2130793 1849303
NSF-PAR ID:
10393263
Author(s) / Creator(s):
;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
18th IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering, CASE
Page Range / eLocation ID:
2042 to 2048
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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