Group control of UAV by influential individuals

Abstract

While the cost of making UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) is dropping, the cost of developing the operator of UAV is the same as before. There is a need for manipulating the flock of UAVs by small number of operators. In the operation of group UAVs, it is important that who the leaders should be and who the followers will be. We use multi agent technique to tackle this problem. This study proposes a mechanism of leader selection based on an approximate manipulability. The approximate manipulability of each agent can be calculated by the movements of neighboring agents against itself. In the proposed method, the leaders are selected dynamically. Simple computer simulation shows the effectiveness of the method.