Overview
The ultimate deployment of large scale networks of cooperative autonomous vehicles offers tremendous promise for future DoD missions. Advances in various engineering technologies have brought the physical realization of such systems close to reality. A major obstacle remains, however, in the deployment of coordination and decision technologies to achieve complex, adaptable, and flexible collective system behavior.
The lack of centralized information processing and decision making is the fundamental challenge of distributed cooperative control. Other challenges include constrained communications, large scale operations, uncertain dynamic environments, and the possibility of a hostile adversarial presence.
Our objective in this MURI is to investigate these issues through the development of new theory, supporting software, and experimental test-bed facilities. Our team is a diverse yet integrated group of individuals in the areas of control theory, computer science, communications, and biological systems from the collaborating institutions of Caltech, Cornell, MIT, and UCLA.