Um ambiente de simulação de múltiplos drones para avaliação de estratégias usando cossimulação

Abstract

Multi-UAV applications are becoming more present in industry, used in defense and commercial applications, where UAVs perform tasks autonomously. Ensuring, however, that autonomous Multi-UAV applications are safe, that is, are able to perform their tasks and achieving their goals, is challenging, as decisions have to be taken with many time limited view of the world and in a hostile environment. Simulation can provide important insights on how well mission strategies perform. For instance, simulations can provide insights on which strategies could provide guarantees for the safety of equipments, in view of the high investments necessary for the creation of a multi-UAV system. We propose a co-simulation framework of multiple UAVs for the analysis of missions, in order to evaluate different flight strategies. To make the environment as realistic as possible, we introduced external threats such as winds, sectors with flight restrictions, and aircraft crashes. We validated our framework using a case study of an air surveillance system, where two types of flight strategies comparing two different flight strategies. We are able to analyse trade-offs between the flight strategies, in terms, of chances of UAV collision, running out of energy, and performing tasks. The results show the effectiveness of the tool in the strategy analysis, allowing the creation and evaluation of more effective strategies.