CONFIDENTIAL - FOR REVIEW ONLY A Heterogeneous Fleet of Vehicles for Automated Humanitarian Missions Pieter J. Mosterman * David Escobar Sanabria ** Enes Bilgin *** Kun Zhang **** Justyna Zander † * MathWorks, Natick, MA, USA (pieter.mosterman@mathworks.com) ** University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA (descobar@umn.edu) *** Boston University, Boston, MA, USA (enes@bu.edu) **** University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA (dabiezu@email.arizona.edu) † HumanoidWay, Natick, MA, USA (dr.justyna.zander@ieee.org) Abstract: Natural disasters are of all times and as technology becomes available its utility in disaster response and relief is exploited. This work presents an automated emergency response system and an experimental framework for its design and validation. Given a set of requests from the field and infrastructure information, a high-level optimization method generates a mission plan for a fleet of autonomous vehicles. The fleet includes ground vehicles for setting up local stations, fixed wing aircraft for assessing infrastructure damage, and rotorcraft for delivering emergency supplies. Internet technology provides a unifying environment for the vehicles, optimization module, operators, and emergency responders with support for computational integration in cyberspace. Experiments validate the guidance and control strategies for the rotorcraft vehicles and show the feasibility of the proposed system in a preliminary sense. Keywords: Humanitarian, Cyber-Physical Systems, Operations, Virtual Integration, Modeling, Simulation, Wireless Control, Model-Based Design, Visualization 1. INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT As a recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Cli- mate Change (IPCC Panel (2013)) confirmed, there is sub- stantial evidence that humans are affecting and are being affected by global climate change. This change may well be responsible for intensifying effects of natural disasters such as storms, floods, earthquakes, and droughts which have an unequal impact on the world population. Those living in poor and developing countries have less of an ability to adapt. Yet, few humanitarian non-governmental organizations or international governmental organizations are prepared to address the implications of this inequal- ity. With technology as a potential equalizer, this work explores requirements for humanitarian missions and the feasibility to address these with emerging technologies and the cyber-physical systems paradigm. 1.1 Humanitarian Mission Requirements ScienceDaily (2005) reports a sharp world-wide increase in natural disasters, from around 100 per year in the early 1960s, to 500 to 800 per year in the early 21st century. The raise is not so much because of an increase of disastrous events, but more so because people have been spreading to vulnerable locations such as near the sea, in part conduced by global climate change. “We know how to prepare for disasters, but the world has not made this a high enough priority,” Sarewitz said in ScienceDaily (2005). Reducing emissions is important, but will not reduce vulnerability to disasters. If disaster preparation received the same political attention as global warming, significant progress could be made.” Still, the issues of climate change and disaster vulnerability remain separated in the eyes of the media, public, environmental activists, scientists, and policymakers. Attempts to find solutions involve disciplines such as sys- tem engineering, computer science, physics, but also disas- ter management, health management, and policy making. Technology can help provide, collect, and store essential information, and share this information among people and organizations involved. Challenges in monitoring a population after a natural disaster result from the nature of an emergency system, which is substantially different from a day-to-day information system. The effectiveness of emergency response depends on the quick provision of detailed, precise, and up-to-date in- formation (e.g., Federal Emergency Management Agency (2010)). Not only the natural environment must be mon- itored, but also the state of traffic, hospitals, and civil infrastructures such as electricity and water supplies. In addition, the location, status, and number of injured peo- ple must be provided in a timely fashion (e.g., McEntire (2005)). The information infrastructure availability may also decrease in the face of a disaster and the state of rel- evant objects may change extremely quickly. For instance, hospitals may close down operations abruptly because of