A new SysML Model for UAV Swarm Modeling: UavSwarmML

In recent years, autonomous or teleoperated robots have played an increasingly important role in civilian applications. In particular, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are autonomous aerial robots that come in a wide variety of basic frameworks and particular specifications. Thus, a swarm of UAVs is a collection of aerial vehicles that work together to achieve a specific goal. However, the design of UAVs swarms is a complex process. Therefore, in this paper we propose a continuous approach to the design a swarm of UAVs based on the model-based systems engineering (MBSE) method. This approach consists of three design levels; the swarm Modeling level, the swarm simulation level and the swarm implementation level. Indeed, we have created a new Systems Modeling Language (SysML) model using Domain Specific Language (DSL) to model the swarm mission, the hardware specifications of the UAV swarms and the software implementation of the swarm system. We called this model “UavSwarmML”. Subsequently, we used in the simulation phase Robot Operating System (ROS) as a middleware to simulate and implement our swarm system to validate the developed models. A case study of an autonomous UAV swarm flight mission was chosen to validate this design approach and illustrate its contributions to the efficient design of UAV swarms.