Centralized Control Architecture for Human-Supervised Mission-Critical Unmanned x Systems Swarms

Abstract

Unmanned x Systems (UxS) are increasingly deployed in defence, search and rescue and infrastructure monitoring missions, often as heterogeneous swarms. As such, one important question is how to optimally control such swarms. The control of heterogenous swarms requires architectures that are not only operationally efficient, but also compatible with meaningful human oversight. This paper presents a comprehensive framework for centralized control of mission-critical UxS swarms, with a focus on the human-factors requirements that arise from the inherent complexity of swarm operations. The paper first establishes a rigorous definition of UxS swarm as coordinated collections of three or more unmanned platforms operating under unified command authority toward a shared mission objective. Five structural components and the role of the human in each component are identified: The Command and Control (C2) layer, Communication Infrastructure, Individual Platform Capabilities, Coordination Algorithms and the Operator Interface as the critical link between human decision-makers and autonomous swarm behaviour. The C2-layer can be designed as a centralized, decentralized or hybrid control architecture. These control architectures are first related to different levels of autonomy and their implications for the human operator. Then a systematic comparative analysis of different C2-architectures is conducted against mission-critical performance metrics including operational efficiency, fault tolerance, decision predictability, human command integration and adaptability. The analysis demonstrates that centralized architectures, when augmented with redundant command nodes and mesh-based communication, deliver superior performance across all mission-critical metrics. In contrast, decentralized architectures, while theoretically scalable, exhibit fundamental limitations in human oversight and global optimization that are incompatible with high-consequence operations. While centralized control architectures are recommended, different levels of system autonomy within a centralized C2-system result in different requirements regarding human-system integration. For example, if the human operator is required to monitor the behaviour of a highly autonomous system concurrently, decision transparency has to be a fundamental design principle. The centralized architecture has to enable the generation of comprehensive decision rationales, reasoning and confidence metrics that support operator trust calibration and meaningful intervention. In addition, the situation awareness of the human operator has to be ensured through optimal representation of the situation awareness requirements relevant for the current situation on the human machine interface. Further design requirements for C2 of heterogenous swarms are derived in the current paper. These findings are directly relevant to the design of next-generation human-swarm interaction systems in safety-critical environments.

Keywords: Unmanned Systems, Swarm Robotics, Control Architecture, Mission-critical Operations, Human-machine Collaboration, Human Factors Reasoning

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1007687