An Ad-hoc Network for Teams of Autonomous Vehicles

Abstract

1 This work was funded by the United States Office of Naval Research (ONR) under Contract Number N00014-00-C-305. Abstract—This paper presents the study of a mobile ad-hoc network for teams of autonomous vehicles. We discuss the special challenges presented by the autonomous team model, and we present the self-sustaining, self-configuring dynamic network architecture we have developed to address them. We further discuss actual field experiments in which elements of the architecture have been proven through realistic test scenarios using surrogate unmanned aerial and ground vehicles. We conclude the paper by presenting lessons learned through the field experiments, performance analysis results and plans for future work.