Title: Cooperative Target Observation of UAVs using Simulated Annealing

Authors: Beulah Moses, Lakhmi C. Jain

Addresses: Knowledge-Based Intelligent Engineering System Centre, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes Campus, SA 5098, Australia. ' Knowledge-Based Intelligent Engineering System Centre, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes Campus, SA 5098, Australia

Abstract: Simulated Annealing (SA) is used to solve various combinatorial optimisation problems and local search problems. This paper deals with Cooperative Target Observation (CTO) by groups of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). We propose a Modified SA algorithm for optimising the position of each of the UAVs to observe the maximum number of targets. CTO is a very good example of study of multi agent cooperation. We compare with Hill Climbing algorithm and Modified SA algorithm and find that the Modified SA algorithm is superior for almost all target speeds, UAV sensor ranges and various group sizes.

Keywords: UAVs; unmanned aerial vehicles; simulated annealing; cooperative target observation; combinatorial optimisation; multi-agent cooperation; multi-agent systems; MAS; agent-based systems.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIDSS.2008.021970

International Journal of Intelligent Defence Support Systems, 2008 Vol.1 No.2, pp.116 - 129

Published online: 11 Dec 2008 *

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