Optimizing component activation and operation aborting in missions with consecutive attempts and common abort command

Motivated by the demand of increasing the mission success probability, there is a shift of attention from single-attempt missions to multi-attempt missions in the mission aborting research. This paper advances the state of the art by modeling missions with multiple consecutive attempts, performed by identical components activated one by one with certain time interval. The mission is subject to a combined attempt aborting policy, encompassing an individual aborting rule (specified by the number of shocks experienced and an operation time threshold during an attempt) and a common aborting rule (specified by issuing time of the common abort command that causes immediate abort of all other attempts when any component is close enough to the mission completion). A numerical method is put forward to assess the mission success probability, expected number of lost components, and expected mission losses. The losses minimization problem is then formulated and solved to determine the optimal values of the attempt aborting policy parameters and the activation delay. The impacts of several mission and model parameters are investigated using a detailed case study of a reconnaissance mission performed by multiple unmanned aerial vehicles. The advantage of the proposed model in reducing the expected mission losses is also demonstrated using the case study.