Optimal and receding-horizon path planning algorithms for communications relay vehicles in complex environments

This thesis presents new algorithms for path planning in a communications constrained environment for teams of unmanned vehicles. This problem involves a lead vehicle that must gather information from a set of locations and relay it back to its operator. In general, these locations and the lead vehicle's position are beyond line of-sight from the operator and non-stationary, which introduces several difficulties to the problem. The proposed solution is to use several additional unmanned vehicles to create a network linkage between the operator and the lead vehicle that can be used to relay information between the two endpoints. Because the operating environment is cluttered with obstacles that block both line-of-sight and vehicle movement, the paths of the vehicles must be carefully planned to meet all constraints. The core problem of interest that is addressed in this thesis is the path planning for these link vehicles. Two solutions are presented in this thesis. The first is a centralized approach based on a numerical solution of optimal control theory. This thesis presents an optimal control problem formulation that balances the competing objectives of minimizing overall mission time and minimizing energy expenditure. Also presented is a new modification of the Rapidly-Exploring Random Tree algorithm that makes it more efficient at finding paths that are applicable to the communications chaining problem. The second solution takes a distributed, receding-horizon approach, where each vehicle solves for its own path using a local optimization that helps the system as a whole achieve the global objective.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Kulling, Karl Christian

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Jonathan P. How.

• Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/51675

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/51675