Engineering Commons^™

Architectural Considerations For Single Operator Management Of Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Gabriel T. Bugajski

Theses and Dissertations

Recently, small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) have become ubiquitous in military battlefield operations due to their intelligence collection capabilities. However, these unmanned systems consistently demonstrate limitations and shortfalls with respect to size, weight, range, line of sight and information management. The United States Air Force Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan 2009-2047 describes an action plan for improved UAS employment which calls out single operator, multi-vehicle mission configurations. This thesis analyzes the information architecture using future concepts of operations, such as biologically-inspired flocking mechanisms. The analysis and empirical results present insight into the engineering of single-operator multiple-vehicle architectures.