Optimal Control for Unmanned Systems with One-way Broadcast Communication

TL;DR

This paper introduces an online optimal control algorithm for unmanned systems that operates effectively in poor communication environments, enabling real-time path planning with collision avoidance and target reaching capabilities.

Contribution

It presents a novel neural network-based receding horizon control algorithm tailored for one-way broadcast communication in challenging environments, with proven convergence and finite-time target achievement.

Findings

Real-time path generation in poor communication conditions.

Effective collision avoidance among agents.

Successful convergence and target reaching in simulations.

Abstract

Unmanned systems (USs) including unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned underwater vehicles, and unmanned ground vehicles have great application prospects in military and civil fields, among which the process of finding feasible and optimal paths for the agents in USs is a kernel problem. Traditional path finding algorithms are hard to adequately obtain optimal paths in real-time under fast time-varying and poor communication environments. We propose an online optimal control algorithm for USs based on a one-way broadcast communication mode under the assumption of a poor communication environment, mobile targets, radars (or sonar), and missiles (or torpedoes). With the principle of receding horizon control, optimal (or suboptimal) paths are then generated by the approximation theory of neural networks and gradient optimization techniques, with low computation requirements. Also, we give a convergence analysis for our algorithm, and show that each agent can reach its target in finite time under some conditions on agents, targets and radar-missiles. Moreover, simulations demonstrate that the agents in USs can generate optimal (or suboptimal) paths in real time using our algorithm while effectively avoiding collision with other agents or detection by enemy radars.