Multi-Target Tracking for Swarm vs. Swarm UAV Systems

Abstract

Unmanned systems, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are developing technologies that are becoming increasingly important. This thesis provides a model for generating a common operational picture (COP) for unmanned systems that is applicable in todayﾒs technology, and presents results and analysis based on simulation studies. This thesis specifically investigates a swarm versus swarm unmanned systems scenario in which opposing teams of UAVs approach each other. Different methodologies for generating a COP from the perspective of a given team are investigated, and a simulation is designed to explore the performance of the selected strategies for performing multi-target tracking. The results of the simulation show the performance of the presented approach where targets are assumed in the field of view of the tracking agents, false detections may or may not be present, and all entities maneuver according to nondeterministic motion models.