Research On Mission Planning For Cooperative UCAVS

Mission planning for multi-UCAV cooperation (MPFMUC) is one of the keys to take the advantages of multiple UCAVs combating cooperatively and to maintain harmonies between the mission complexities and UCAV abilities. The essence of MPEMUC is to design cooperative plans using many technologies including optimization, decision, intelligent computing, etc. MPFMUC is a complicated multi-objective optimization and decision problem with many strongly coupling constraints, and its objective is to make the integrated effects of multi-UCAV combating cooperatively exceed the total effects of each UCAV combating separately. This dissertation is dedicated to the cooperative UCAVs mission assignment and the path planning problems, which are integrants of MPFMUC.Firstly, the concepts relevant to MPFMUC were expatiated and defined, and the complexities of the MPFMUC problems were analyzed. A hierarchical and iterative mission planning frame, which includes formation layer and single-UCAV layer mission planning, was proposed based on the analysis of the cooperative UCAVs mission hierarchy. A MPFMUC logic flow was put forward further to decrease the problem solving difficulties consulting some tactical assumptions. The mission planning problem was decomposed into several sub-problems of different layers by inter-layered and intra-layered decoupling in the flow. The cooperative UCAVs mission assignment and the path planning problems were extracted from the sub-problems.Secondly, a multi-objective integer programming (MOIP) model for the cooperative UCAVs mission assignment was presented. The virtual mission area concept was advanced to transform the constraints of three dimensions to those of two dimensions to decrease the decision-variable complexities. The constraints and indexes were formalized, and the MOIP model was brought forward on the basis of the multi-objective optimization theory. This provides a method of modeling the cooperative UCAVs mission assignment with many complex constraints.Thirdly, a VORONOI diagram based cooperative UCAVs path planning (VBCUPP) model was proposed. The battle environments, which include the no-flying areas and the threats, are formulized in the VORONOI diagram. The VORONOI diagram was extended to handle different types of threats and the UCAV flight safety altitude constraints. The threat-indexes were built further based on the VORONOI diagram to make the computed battle environment threat as approaching the true threat-strength as possible. The VBCUPP model was put forward by taking the VORONOI vertexes as the path points and the VORONOI edges as the path segments, and such provides an effective method of modeling a kind of multi-path planning problems under complex environments.Fourthly, a multi-objective integer programming evolutionary algorithm (MOIPEA) was put forward for the mission assignment MOIP model. According to the constraints...