Using BML for Command Control of Autonomous Unmanned Air Systems

摘要

The use of Unmanned Vehicle Systems (UVS) for military and civilian operations has become more prevalent recently and these systems are often in high demand. Thus, optimizing their effectiveness and increasing their availability is of significant interest, and as highly-valued assets, it is also essential to ensure that they are able to operate effectively throughout their entire nominal lifespan. Also, with forecasts for increasing numbers of UVS and a vast range of utilization scenarios, it is important that systems can be controlled in a safe, efficient and timely manner. In the military domain, UVS are often operating in unfriendly Areas of Operation (AO) that may be characterized by disruptive communications environments and multiple air and land-based threats. These factors represent challenges for those responsible for successfully operating the vehicles and accomplishing the mission objectives: the UVS operators. Introducing higher levels of autonomy reduces the required human intervention and frees up the operators to perform other tasks such as operating multiple vehicles. Introducing automation can be seen as a key component to achieving higher levels of autonomy and necessitates automation management strategies to address low-level and high-level control needs but also to mitigate possible negative side effects such as automation bias, complacency and loss of situation awareness. In the area of UVS control, much work has been done on examining automation management strategies and the implications of reducing human supervisory control associated with higher levels of autonomy, while little work has been done in the area of C2- Robotic Systems interoperability. In particular, implementing automation strategies requires flawless communication among automated systems, between the Vehicle Control System and the operator interface, and - at a higher level of abstraction - with command and control (C2) systems. This study explores the concept of utilizing a Battle Management Language as a formal language for machine-to-machine communication across systems as an enabler to satisfy requirements for C2-Robotic Systems interoperability. The Coalition Battle Management Language (C-BML) is being developed by SISO as a digitized representation of military tasking and reporting information for exchange among C2, simulation and robotic systems. The unambiguous and digitized nature of C-BML makes it an excellent candidate for use in tasking and receiving information from UVS. More specifically, this paper considers some of the emerging requirements for the control of Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV) and explores the possible use of C-BML as part of UAV Ground Control System (GCS) interface.