research - Semi-Autonomous Operations Collaborative Engagement of Unmanned Systems

The Need:

To effectively engage targets, soldiers must be able to detect, identify, track and locate threats in hostile and hazardous environments. Using robotic unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to conduct target engagement provides a variety of tactical advantages, including high levels of precision, a rapid tempo, multi-point reconnaissance and protecting troops from mortal danger.

The
Project:

The Collaborative UGV/UAV Engagement project will increase the autonomy of unmanned vehicles and provide warfighters with an adaptive and dynamic execution of autonomous target engagement using collaborating unmanned vehicles. With increased autonomy, individual unmanned vehicles can communicate, coordinate and influence each other, allowing them to interact in collaborative teams of unmanned assets. The soldier will be able to monitor the execution of the mission and dynamically correct mission parameters in real-time, to ensure the unmanned system successfully achieves the goals of the mission. The project will develop the decentralized data fusion and active sensor network software module for the Raven UAV and the iRobot® PackBot® UGV, to support the pursuit and tracking of a dismounted target. A single supervisor operator control unit (OCU) will also be developed to provide the operator with mission-level situational awareness and monitoring and control of the heterogeneous unmanned vehicle team.

The
Goals:

• Develop the supporting collaborative architectures and supervisory control interfaces to support a combined UAV-UGV team that shares relative target information to track and pursue an operator-designated target of interest.
• Use collaborative software to enable the Raven and PackBot to autonomously execute mission goals while reducing operator workload, allowing the effective management of critical mission events and the high-level retasking of the individual unmanned vehicles.
• Extend the development of technologies supporting UAV-UGV collaboration to other unmanned systems, enabling the PackBot to be a coordinated and integrated participant in other UAV-UGV teaming missions.
• Develop a high-level functional architecture capable of enabling autonomous collaborative target engagement with heterogeneous unmanned systems, including air and ground unmanned vehicles.
• Evaluate existing multi-agent and coordination systems to facilitate appropriate coordination and synchronization between manned and unmanned assets during mission execution.
• Identify critical functions and metrics for the successful accomplishment of a collaborative unmanned system target engagement.

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See All Core Technologies.

collaborative engagement of unmanned systems

Semi-Autonomous Operations

• Wayfarer
• Daredevil
• LANdroids robot
• Sentinel
• collaborative engagement of unmanned systems
• iRobot 500 PackBot with Mapping Kit