Route survivability autonomous method and system for an unmanned aircraft system
AssigneeRockwell Collins, Inc.
InventorsAlexander V. ROUP, Rebecca DEBSKI
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An unmanned aircraft system (UAS) may include a route survivability autonomous system to evade threats using a Markov Decision Process (MDP). A threat location along with other information is provided to a subsystem. A state helper function defines a state having state features, include a threat level severity of the threat. The state having the state features is provided to an MDP policy created for the UAS. The MDP policy determines an action for the UAS based on the state features. The action is provided to an action helper function to determine a guidance for the UAS. A maneuver primitive supervisor (MPS) issues a command for the UAS to evade the threat or continue the route based on the guidance.
Claims20
A route survivability autonomous system for an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) comprising:
- a subsystem configured to execute a state helper function to define a state having state features for the UAS, wherein the subsystem receives a threat location relative to the UAS and generates a threat severity level as a state feature for the state;
- a Markov Decision Process (MDP) policy configured to receive the state having the state features for the UAS and to determine an action;
- a maneuver primitive (MP) helper to execute an action helper function based on the action determined by the MDP policy, wherein the action helper function defines a guidance for the UAS based on the action;
- and
- a maneuver primitive supervisor (MPS) configured to receive the guidance based on the action from the MDP policy and to issue a command to the UAS.
A method for operating an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) to evade a threat, the method comprising:
- receiving a threat location of the threat at a state helper function of a subsystem for a route survivability autonomous system for the UAS;
- generating a state having state features using the state helper function;
- determining an action for the UAS using a Markov Decision Process (MDP) policy;
- defining a guidance for the UAS using an action helper function based on the action from the MDP policy;
- and
- issuing a command to the UAS based on the guidance in response to the threat.
A method for generating a Markov Decision Process (MDP) policy for use in a route survivability autonomous system for an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), the method comprising:
- defining a set of finite states for the UAS;
- defining a set of actions for the UAS corresponding to the set of finite states;
- defining a transition function using a first helper function to generate a probability tensor;
- defining a reward function using a second helper function to generate a reward tensor;
- and
- using a MDP solver to generate the MDP policy based on the set of finite states, the set of actions, the probability tensor, and the reward tensor.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.