Derek Kingston's research while affiliated with Air Force Research Laboratory and other places
What is this page?
This page lists the scientific contributions of an author, who either does not have a ResearchGate profile, or has not yet added these contributions to their profile.
It was automatically created by ResearchGate to create a record of this author's body of work. We create such pages to advance our goal of creating and maintaining the most comprehensive scientific repository possible. In doing so, we process publicly available (personal) data relating to the author as a member of the scientific community.
If you're a ResearchGate member, you can follow this page to keep up with this author's work.
If you are this author, and you don't want us to display this page anymore, please let us know.
It was automatically created by ResearchGate to create a record of this author's body of work. We create such pages to advance our goal of creating and maintaining the most comprehensive scientific repository possible. In doing so, we process publicly available (personal) data relating to the author as a member of the scientific community.
If you're a ResearchGate member, you can follow this page to keep up with this author's work.
If you are this author, and you don't want us to display this page anymore, please let us know.
Publications (41)
This paper considers the problem of tracking multiple moving targets on a road network with sparse, highly localized, unattended ground sensor data that are subject to clutter and missed detections. Hidden Markov models for single-target localization with unattended ground sensor data are first derived for road networks, under the assumption of per...
Simultaneous arrival is one of the classic applications in cooperative control, where a group of cooperating unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) must reach their assigned destinations simultaneously. Traditional approaches estimate the expected time-to-arrival (ETA) ahead of time with the predefined profiles on the paths and the velocity. This chapter...
The paper presents a feedback control design that allows a Dubins vehicle to enter a circular trajectory using only range-based measurements from the vehicle to the center of the trajectory. The controller is derived and analyzed based on a novel state space kinematic model, with the state that is composed of two continuous and one discrete state v...
There is growing interest in using unmanned aerial vehicles to assist in operations that require search and surveillance. However, a challenge remains in providing the right level of automation. Manual teleoperation and waypoint-based planning provide a great deal of flexibility but require significant human effort, whereas high levels of automatio...
This document describes the motivation, theoretical
description, development, and field test of a system utilizing
multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)s that cooperate
with each other, using Unattended Ground Sensors (UGS), to
monitor an area, detect intruder vehicles, capture imagery of
the intruders, and deliver that imagery to the home base....
A critical requirement in the consensus-based simultaneous arrival problem is that consensus on the ETA must be achieved before any actual arrivals. Thus, the convergence rate of the consensus algorithm is important. When velocity constraints exist, however, finding the convergence rate of continuous-time algorithms is challenging. To address const...
This document describes the motivation, theoretical description, development, and flight test of a system that utilizes unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) and unattended ground sensors (UGSs) to detect and image intruders on a road network. The need for completely autonomous behavior drives the design of this system so that the UAV makes onboard decision...
This work addresses the problem of localizing a mobile intruder on a road network with a small UAV through fusion of event-based `hard data' collected from a network of unattended ground sensors (UGS) and `soft data' provided by human dismount operators (HDOs) whose statistical characteristics may be unknown. Current approaches to road network intr...
This work considers the challenging problem of simultaneous modeling and fusion of 'soft data' generated by a network of 'human sensors' for spatial state estimation tasks, such as lost target search or large area surveillance. Human sensors can opportunistically provide useful information to constrain difficult state estimation problems, but are i...
A Dubins vehicle circumnavigation controller is derived based on an analysis of state space dynamics resulting from a state transformation. The controller is designed and analyzed in the state space with two continuous and one discrete variables. We showed that the property of our control strategy can be studied based on 2D phase portraits, includi...
This paper presents two control algorithms enabling a UAV to circumnavigate
an unknown target using range and range rate (i.e., the derivative of range)
measurements. Given a prescribed orbit radius, both control algorithms (i) tend
to drive the UAV toward the tangent of prescribed orbit when the UAV is outside
or on the orbit, and (ii) apply zero...
This paper introduces a post-iteration averaging algorithm to achieve asymptotic optimality in convergence rates of stochastic approximation algorithms for consensus control with structural constraints. The algorithm involves two stages. The first stage is a coarse approximation obtained using a sequence of large stepsizes. Then, the second stage p...
This special issue contains a collection of papers on task assignment problems, path planning problems, cooperative control problems and coordinated control problems. Each of the authors has concentrated his or her efforts on both theory development and application to enhance the overall academic contribution of each paper. The theme of this specia...
A histogram filter is used to estimate the state of a vehicle traveling along a known road network. Our contribution is to provide a framework to estimate vehicle states without knowing its route or the final destination. The vehicle is constrained to travel on the road network with an unknown but bounded speed. We account for road intersections by...
As the capability of unmanned systems increases and the availability of human resources decreases, the automation of manpower-intense tasks becomes more attractive. Base defense tasks such as perimeter surveillance, alarm response, and area security can be performed by a team of automated agents, allowing humans to become directors of the surveilla...
Formal languages have recently come under attention as a powerful tool to describe in a precise and rigorous way mission specifications (i.e., mission objectives and constraints) for robotic systems, and to design planning and control algorithms that provably achieve the specifications. In this paper, we consider Process Algebras as a mission speci...
Monitoring roads is an important task for missions such as base security. This paper describes a road monitoring system composed of a team of small UAVs equipped with gimballed cameras. Given a fine description of the target road, algorithms for waypoint approximation, sensor steering, and UAV spacing are developed to allow N UAVs to survey stretch...
This paper poses the cooperative perimeter-surveillance problem and offers a decentralized solution that accounts for perimeter growth (expanding or contracting) and insertion/deletion of team members. By identifying and sharing the critical coordination information and by exploiting the known communication topology, only a small communication rang...
This paper addresses the problem of using a team of UAVs to cooperatively monitor multiple forest fires (called hotspots) in a region. We deploy two types of agents: service agents that locally monitor the state of the hotspots and detector agents that search for hotspots and assign service agents to those that are detected. We develop an assignmen...
This paper poses the cooperative perimeter surveillance problem and offers a decentralized solution that accounts for perimeter growth (expanding or contracting) and insertion/deletion of team members. By identifying and sharing the critical coordination information and by exploiting the known communication topology, only a small communication rang...
Numerous applications require aerial surveillance. Civilian applications include monitoring forest fires, oil fields, and pipelines and tracking wildlife. Applications to homeland security include border patrol and monitoring the perimeter of nuclear power plants. Military applications are numerous. The current approach to these applications is to...
This paper develops a distributed algorithm for average-consensus in a discrete-time framework based on a formal matrix limit definition of average-consensus. Using this algorithm, the average-consensus problem is solved under switching network topologies provided that the network switch between instantaneously balanced, connected-over-time network...
The objective of this paper is to explore the feasibility of using multiple low-altitude, short endurance (LASE) unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) to cooperatively monitor and track the propagation of large forest fires. A real-time algorithm is described for tracking the perimeter of fires with an on-board infrared sensor. Using this algorithm, we deve...
The problem of assigning multiple agents to time-dependent cooperative tasks is addressed using a mixed-integer linear program. A time-dependent cooperative task is a task requiring multiple agents to perform separate sub tasks simultaneously or within some predetermined margin where agent availability to perform a subtask is limited to specific in...
In this paper, we propose discrete-time and continuous-time consensus update schemes motivated by the discrete-time and continuous-time Kalman filters. With certainty information encoded into each agent, the proposed consensus schemes explicitly account for relative confidence/reliability of information states from each agent in the team. We show m...
In many cooperative control problems, a shared knowledge of information provides the basis for cooperation. When this information is different for each agent, a state of noncooperation can result. Consensus algorithms ensure that after some time the agents would agree on the information critical for coordination, called the coordination variable. I...
The objective of this paper is to describe the design and implementation of a small semi-autonomous fixed-wing unmanned air vehicle. In particular we describe the hardware and software architectures used in the design. We also describe a low weight, low cost autopilot developed at Brigham Young University and the algorithms associated with the auto...
Autonomous unmanned air vehicle flight control systems require robust path generation to account for terrain obstructions, weather, and moving threats such as radar, jammers, and unfriendly aircraft. In this paper, we outline a feasible, hierarchal approach for real-time motion planning of small autonomous fixed-wing UAVs. The approach divides the...
Small unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) and micro air vehicles (MAVs) have payload and power constraints that prohibit heavy sensors and powerful processors. This paper presents real-time attitude and position estimation solutions that use small, inexpensive sensors and low-power microprocessors. In connection with an Extended Kalman Filter attitude est...
Autonomous unmanned air vehicle flight control systems require robust path generation to account for terrain obstructions, weather, and moving threats such as radar, jammers, and unfriendly aircraft. In this paper, we outline a feasible, hierarchal approach for real-time motion planning of small autonomous fixed-wing UAVs. The approach divides the...
Citations
... When all the MAVs are in the arena, they fly to the predefined area [10]. Regarding the control algorithms, the leading vehicle receives commands of speed and angles of orientation and trajectory, while the follower follows the manoeuvres of the leader maintaining a distance of separation to avoid collisions, where the system of coordinates are centred in the leading vehicle [11,12]. In [13], the authors use a pilot to control the leading vehicle remotely, the control scheme consists of having to follow the leader under a separation distance. ...
... During a given experimental trial, the software showed a video of a UAS simulation (Figure 2). Simulation videos were created using UxAS and AMASE (Rasmussen, Kingston, & Humphrey, 2018) with video capture software. ...
... In [1] the target's motion is assumed to be described by a 2D stochastic process which is represented as 2D Brownian motion and the Markov chain approximation method is employed for numerically determining the optimal control policy. The work presented in [28] seeks to continuously keep a stochastic target in the view of a gimbaled camera while avoiding blind spots, like those produced by landing. A cutting-plane approach is presented in [34], which enables multiple vehicles to seek and detect one or more uncertain targets. ...
... Another powerful technique, employed by (Allik (2017)) and (Ahmed et al. (2017)), is to incorporate negative information. Traditional localization would only update the target location belief if it were viewed. ...
![[object Object]](https://i1.rgstatic.net/ii/profile.image/277571796258817-1443189681264_Q64/Nisar-Ahmed-20.jpg)
... However, they have three-dimensional (3-D) mobility, are easy to deploy, inexpensive and flexible to operate, and provide time-and space-resolved measurements of wind speeds (e.g. Nichols et al., 2017). They are versatile and can easily be equipped with additional sensors to map further air properties in 3-D space. ...
... Cao [4] and Zhang et al. [23] proposed two control algorithms based on distance and distance rate measurements, and Cao [4] also proposed an algorithm based on distance rate estimation. Moreover, Matveev et al. [14] and Milutinović et al. [15] proposed two control protocols based on distance measurements, the former of which is a sliding mode controller and the latter is a feedback controller. Further, Dong et al. [9] proposed a control algorithm based on distance measurements that enables the agents to surround unknown targets in an arbitrarily smooth orbit. ...
... The initial software architecture model (shown in Fig. 14) contains drivers for communication with the Ground Station and Flight Control Computer, a Waypoint Manager component that provides flight plan coordinates to the Flight Control Computer, and the Flight Planner. The Flight Planner is the open-source UxAS software developed by AFRL [36]. ...
... A behavioral control scheme is designed in [81] to maintain the collective circular motion through following a moving beacon by a group of nonholonomic vehicles with sensory limitations. In [177], the authors study two collective behaviors the collective circular motion and the circumnavigation by a group of nonholonomic mobile robots. To accomplish this objective, a nearest-neighbor algorithm is developed based only on the range measurements to lead the agents to spread evenly on the prespecified circular trajectory. ...
... Based on these ranks, priorities are determined during the establishment of trajectories. In [21], the authors have proposed an approach for fully autonomous multi-cooperative drone system for intruder detection and isolation. The authors have represented the problem as a deterministic pursuit and evasion game where drones coordinate their actions and define their paths by exchanging messages about their current states as well as the state of the environment. ...
![[object Object]](https://i1.rgstatic.net/ii/profile.image/660648623079425-1534522314444_Q64/Krishna-Kalyanam-2.jpg)
... This work provides several significant contributions on top of previous work presented by the authors in [2], namely, 1) an improved and more accurate HMM/UGS positive and negative sensor data model, which allows for much more accurate target localization in the perfect and imperfect data association cases; 2) a formal treatment and derivation of an RBPF-based solution to the multitarget tracking problem for a known number of targets; and 3) thorough numerical simulation studies to assess the efficacy of the proposed HMM and HMM/RBPF approaches for localizing multiple targets simultaneously in different road networks and sensing conditions (with variable clutter and missed detection rates). ...
