Optimization and Decision-Making Framework for Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Fleet Design

What is it about?

Given the advances in rapid prototyping and micro-electronics, designing unmanned aerial systems for specific missions has become even more feasible and cost effective than commercially available platforms. The challenge of designing the appropriate vehicle and allocating the appropriate fleet remains increasingly difficult despite the technological and cost advantages. With the use of design optimization and interactive decision-making techniques, we formalize a framework and methodology that provides design and allocation insight and guidance to decision-makers such that the yet-to-be-determined fleets are what end-users intended. We demonstrate this method using a generic atmospheric profiling mission conducted over five years and show that there are significant cost savings and increased mission capability among the fleet designs found using the framework compared to baseline mission metrics.

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