Automating Humanitarian Missions with a Heterogeneous Fleet of Vehicles Pieter J. Mosterman a , David Escobar Sanabria b , Enes Bilgin c , Kun Zhang d , Justyna Zander e a MathWorks, Natick, MA, USA (pieter.mosterman@mathworks.com) b University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA (descobar@umn.edu) c Boston University, Boston, MA, USA (enes@bu.edu) d University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA (dabiezu@email.arizona.edu) e Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA (dr.justyna.zander@ieee.org) Abstract The use of technology for disaster response and relief in the aftermath of natural disasters is growing. To explore the opportunity afforded by emerg- ing technologies, this work developed an experimental automated emergency response system. Given a set of requests from the field and infrastructure in- formation, a high-level optimization method generates a mission plan for a fleet of autonomous vehicles, including ground vehicles, fixed-wing aircraft, and de- livery rotorcraft. The mission plan assigns vehicles to a list of functions and locations to be visited. Internet technology integrates the various system ele- ments and provides a unifying environment for the physical and the modeled world in cyberspace. Guidance and control enable the vehicles to autonomously execute their plans. The movements of the fleet vehicles including their dynamic behavior are illustrated in a virtual reality interface. Preliminary experiments with a small fleet of simulated vehicles show the feasibility of such an approach. Keywords: Cyber-Physical Systems, Operations, Virtual Integration, Modeling, Simulation, Wireless Control, Model-Based Design, Visualization, Humanitarian 1. Introduction A recent report by the United Nations [1] found substantial evidence of cli- mate change not only affecting humans but also humans affecting this change. While much attention has been devoted to climate change itself, few humanitar- ian nongovernmental organizations or international governmental organizations have made much of the unequal impact that climate change will have on soci- ety. In particular, the intensifying effects of natural disasters call for improved 1 Justyna Zander is supported as a MathWorks Fellow Preprint submitted to Journal of L A T E X Templates October 1, 2014