Flight and In-Water Experiments of Autonomy and Human Interface Technologies with Multiple Unmanned Systems

This paper describes operator, flight, and in-water experiments with autonomy and human interface technologies for management of multiple unmanned air, sea surface, and undersea vehicles. The vehicles were managed by a single operator based on high-level mission objectives, constraints, risks, and priorities. The scenarios explored contingencies and changes in tasking that required both operator-driven and fully autonomous dynamic replanning. Live asset and laboratory experiments were performed using six to seven naval operators with different backgrounds including air and sea vehicle operators and mission commanders. The test vehicles for the live experiments were two Kestrel fixed-wing Unmanned Air Vehicles, 1 small hand-launched UAV, a high-speed Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV), and the Autonomous Maritime Navigation (AMN) USV. The AMN USV was also used as a surrogate for an Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (UUV) performing a surface reconnaissance and surveillance mission. Additional vehicles were simulated including multiple UUVs involved in search tasks. The vehicles had different levels of on-board autonomy. Some were sent high-level mission tasking only, and others were sent detailed plans. Standardization Agreement (STANAG) 4586 Command and Control and Common Route Definition (CRD) format was used to communicate with the vehicle auto-pilots. Data was collected on a range of system and human/system performance metrics. In addition to discussing results, this paper will provide some lessons learned.