Failure analysis of unmanned autonomous swarm considering cascading effects

doi:10.23919/JSEE.2022.000069

Journal of Systems Engineering and Electronics ›› 2022, Vol. 33 ›› Issue (3): 759-770.doi: 10.23919/JSEE.2022.000069

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Failure analysis of unmanned autonomous swarm considering cascading effects

Bei XU^1,²(), Guanghan BAI¹(), Yun’an ZHANG¹(), Yining FANG¹(), Junyong TAO^1,*()

¹ Laboratory of Science and Technology on Integrated Logistics Support, College of Intelligent Sciences and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China
² School of General Aviation, Nanchang Hangkong University, Nanchang 330063, China

Received:2020-12-04 Online:2022-06-18 Published:2022-06-24
Contact: Junyong TAO E-mail:70611@nchu.edu.cn;baiguanghan@nudt.edu.cn;yazhang@nudt.edu.cn;fangyining@nchu.edu.cn;taojunyong@nudt.edu.cn
About author:|XU Bei was born in 1987. She is currently working toward her Ph.D. degree with National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China. She is also currently a lecturer with the School of General Aviation, Nanchang Hangkong University, Jiangxi, China. Her research interests include network reliability and system resilience. E-mail: 70611@nchu.edu.cn||BAI Guanghan was born in 1986. He received his Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada, in 2016. He is currently a lecturer with the Laboratory of Science and Technology on Integrated Logistics Support, National University of Defense Technology. His research interests include network reliability and system resilience. E-mail: baiguanghan@nudt.edu.cn||ZHANG Yun’an was born in 1983. He received his Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China, in 2014. He is currently an associate professor with the Laboratory of Science and Technology on Integrated Logistics Support, National University of Defense Technology. His research interest focuses on system reliability. E-mail: yazhang@nudt.edu.cn||FANG Yining was born in 1991. She received her Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada, in 2019. She is currently a lecturer with the Laboratory of Science and Technology on Integrated Logistics Support, National University of Defense Technology. Her research interests include system resilience. E-mail: fangyining@nchu.edu.cn||TAO Junyong was born in 1969. He received his Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China, in 2000. He is currently a professor with the Laboratory of Science and Technology on Integrated Logistics Support, National University of Defense Technology. His research interests include reliability test and evaluation. E-mail: taojunyong@nudt.edu.cn
Supported by:
This work was supported by the Science and Technology on Reliability & Environmental Engineering Laboratory (6142004004-2), and the Science Technology Commission of the CMC (2019-JCJQ-JJ-180, ZZKY-YX-10-3).

Abstract

Abstract:

In this paper, we focus on the failure analysis of unmanned autonomous swarm (UAS) considering cascading effects. A framework of failure analysis for UAS is proposed. Guided by the framework, the failure analysis of UAS with crash fault agents is performed. Resilience is used to analyze the processes of cascading failure and self-repair of UAS. Through simu-lation studies, we reveal the pivotal relationship between resilience, the swarm size, and the percentage of failed agents. The simulation results show that the swarm size does not affect the cascading failure process but has much influence on the process of self-repair and the final performance of the swarm. The results also reveal a tipping point exists in the swarm. Meanwhile, we get a counter-intuitive result that larger-scale UAS loses more resilience in the case of a small percentage of failed individuals, suggesting that the increasing swarm size does not necessarily lead to high resilience. It is also found that the temporal degree failure strategy performs much more harmfully to the resilience of swarm systems than the random failure. Our work can provide new insights into the mechanisms of swarm collapse, help build more robust UAS, and develop more efficient failure or protection strategies.

Key words: unmanned autonomous swarm (UAS), failures analy-sis, cascading failure, resilience

Bei XU, Guanghan BAI, Yun’an ZHANG, Yining FANG, Junyong TAO. Failure analysis of unmanned autonomous swarm considering cascading effects[J]. Journal of Systems Engineering and Electronics, 2022, 33(3): 759-770.

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Parameter	Symbol	Value
Speed/(m/s)	$ {v}_{0} $	1
Zone of interaction/m	r	6
Zone of repulsion/m	$ {r}_{0} $	1
The max turning angle/(rad/s)	$ {\vartheta }_{\max} $	2
Time step/s	$ \Delta t $	0.2
Number of individuals	$ N $	10, 50, 100, 200, 500
Failure proportion	$ P $	0—1

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Failure analysis of unmanned autonomous swarm considering cascading effects

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