COOPERATIVE AUTONOMY FOR THE MASSES - FUNDAMENTAL STEPS TOWARD ENABLING COMPLEX MULTIASSET MISSIONS WITH SIMPLE POINT-AND-CLICK TASKING

摘要

In a continuing effort to reduce the man-power requirements while increasing the functional utility of unmanned systems, a framework is developed whereby the end-users of sensor data, with no training in the operation of unmanned systems, are able to task groups of unmanned vehicles to work cooperatively toward a common mission objective. In the example study, two unmanned air vehicles with different sensor capabilities are used to search a road. The mission controller merely prescribes a sensor-path-of-interest, and each vehicle calculates a flight path and sensor track to complete the mission, and real-time cooperation is enabled through machine-to-machine communications and adaptive flight controls. Flight test results are shown for several experiments with different operational constraints.