Optimal Cooperative Thermalling of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Motivated by cooperative exploration missions, this chapter considers the use of thermals to increase the altitudes of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The mission of the UAVs is to travel through a given area and identify updrafts. The UAVs communicate to each other the location of each rise or fail in their altitude to form a map of the area. This imperfect map can then be used to identify areas of interest that may be potential thermals. The subsequent problem of utilizing these thermals is addressed from the viewpoint of information collection based on Shannon's channel capacity equation. This method yields paths that achieve the intended result, to elevate the aircraft to higher altitudes, while benefiting from cooperation. Several illustrations are given.