Apparatus and process for unmanned tasking

A system for optimized tasking of unmanned vehicles, comprising:

• at least one computing device comprising:
• at least one processor communicatively connected to a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium;
• a plurality of unmanned vehicles communicatively connected to the at least one computing device and configured to transmit data to and receive data from the at least one computing device, each unmanned vehicle of the plurality comprising a control system configured to operatively control the unmanned vehicle;
• the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having code stored thereon such that the system is configured to, at each checkpoint time interval of a mission time interval:
• receive, by the at least one processor, at least one of external data or mission data from one or more external data sources or one or more mission data sources in communicative connection with the at least one computing device;
• generate in a map coordinate system, by the at least one processor, a demand density map of a geographic area in which the plurality of unmanned vehicles are to perform one or more tasks, the demand density map including one or more grids or masks including the external and/or mission data and aligned over a uniform cell grid of the demand density map;
• calculate, by the at least one processor, a demand value for each cell of the uniform cell grid based on the external data and/or the mission data correspondingly aligned with each cell center in the one or more grids or masks;
• generate, by the at least one processor, a Voronoi tessellation including a plurality of Voronoi polygons, the plurality including one Voronoi polygon for each unmanned vehicle of the plurality, and each Voronoi polygon including a target deployment location;
• iteratively execute, by the at least one processor, a cost function, wherein the demand value for each cell of the uniform cell grid and each target deployment location are provided to the cost function as input, wherein, after each iteration, each target deployment location is updated based on the cost function output and the Voronoi tessellation is updated based on the updated target deployment locations, and wherein the cost function is iteratively executed until it is determined that convergence is achieved;
• assign, by the at least one processor, one or more unmanned vehicles to each target deployment location;
• determine, by the at least one processor, an executable trajectory for each unmanned vehicle of the plurality of unmanned vehicles;
• transmit, via the communicative connection, the executable trajectory for each unmanned vehicle to the plurality of unmanned vehicles;
• and
• wherein, the control system of each unmanned vehicle of the plurality of unmanned vehicles is further configured to cause each unmanned vehicle to move within the geographic area based on its respective executable trajectory.