98 research outputs found

    Distributed Real-Time Hardware- and Man-in-the-loop Simulation for the ICARO II Unmanned Systems Autopilot

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    The autopilot market for small and research UAVs offers several products, but most of them, although widely configurable or even open-source, do not constitute a practical and safe development system for custom guidance, navigation and control systems. The ICARO project aims at providing the small UAV community with a valid autopilot alternative. The ICARO autopilot exploits rapid control system prototyping techniques and immersive manned simulation with the possibility of testing the autopilot using the Hardware- In-the-Loop (HIL) approach. This paper describes the hardware-in-the-loop and man-in-the-loop simulator for the ICARO II platform together with the synchronization protocol we developed to keep simulator and autopilot synchronized. Experimental evidence of the effectiveness of the synchronization protocol is given

    Novel Haptic Cueing for UAV Tele-Operation.

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    The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is continuously increasing both for military and civilian operations. The degree of automation inside an UAV has reached the capability of high levels of autonomy, increasing but human participation/action is still a requirement to ensure an ultimate level of safety for the mission. Direct remote piloting is often required for a board range of situations; this is true especially for larger UAVs, where a fault might be dangerous for the platform but even for the other entities of its environment (people, building etc.). Unfortunately the physical separation between pilot/operator and the UAV reduces greatly the situational awareness; this has a negative impact on system performance in the presence of remote and unforeseen environmental constraints and disturbances. This is why this thesis is dedicated to the study of means to increase the level of situational awareness of the UAV operator. The sense of telepresence is very important in teleoperation, and it appears reasonable, and it has already been shown in the literature, that extending the visual feedback with force feedback is able to complement the visual information (when missing or limited). An artificially recreated sense of touch (haptic) may allow the operator to better perceive information from the remote aircraft state, the environment and its constraints, hopefully preventing dangerous situations. This thesis introdues first a novel classification for haptic aid systems in two large classes: Direct Haptic Aid (DHA) and Indirect Haptic Aid (IHA), then, after showing that almost all existing aid concepts belong to the first class, focuses on IHA and tries to show that classical applications (that used a DHA approach) can be revised in a IHA fashion. The novel IHA systems produce different sensations, which in most cases may appear as exactly "opposite in sign" from the corresponding DHA; these sensations can provide valuable cues for the pilot, both in terms of improvement of performance and "level of appreciation". Furthermore, it will be shown that the novel cueing algorithms, which were designed just to appear "natural" to the operator, and not to directly help the pilot in his task (as in the DHA cases), can outperform the corresponding DHA systems. Three case studies were selected: obstacle avoidance, wind gust rejection, and a combination of the two. For all the cases, DHA and IHA systems were designed and compared against baseline performance with no haptic aid. Test results show that a net improvement in terms of performance is provided by employing the IHA cuse instead of both the DHA cues or the visual cues only. Both professional pilots and naïve subjects were used in some of the experiments. The perceived feelings transmitted by the haptic cues, strongly depend by the type of the experiment and the quality of the participants: the professional pilots, for instance, retained the DHA the most helpful force while they preferred IHA because they found it more natural and because they felt a better control authority on the aircraft; different results were obtained with naive participants. In the end, this thesis aim is to show that the IHA philosophy is a valid and promising alternative to the other commonly used, and published in the scientific literature, approaches which fall in the DHA category. Finally the haptic cueing for the obstacle avoidance task was tested in the presence of time delay in the communication link, as in a classical bilateral teleoperation scheme. The Master was provide with an admittance controller and an observer for force exerted by the human on the stick was developed. Experiments have shown that the proposed system is capable of standing substantial communication delays

    Haptic support systems for curve negotiation in a driving simulator

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    A human operator performing a manual control task can be assisted by haptic shared control, a novel approach in literature which makes use of a continuous-time force feedback to guide the operator in a specific control direction. In a previous research, a haptic controller has been designed and tested in a for curve negotiation support in a driving simulator. This support system provides a force feedback the operator has to give way to in order to correct the vehicle deviations from a reference trajectory. It was proved in an experiment to yield benefits in terms of increased performance and reduced effort from the operator with respect to manual driving. As a variation from the haptic shared control philosophy, a novel approach has been introduced in literature for supporting a human operator piloting RPVs in a simulated environment. This haptic controller is called Indirect since the force feedback it provides has the only effect of changing the neutral point of the control interface. The operator can exploit this aiding by contrasting the force feedback and keeping the control device close to the central position. The Indirect haptic controller was proved in an experiment to increase performance and was found helpful by the pilots, as well as the Direct controller, which is the classic approach, and compared to manual piloting. This novel approach in haptic shared control has only been investigated as a support for piloting RPVs. In this project the Indirect controller is being designed in a modeling study and tested for a curve negotiation task in a driving simulator. The Indirect controller for curve negotiation is designed in a model-based study, where a scheme is employed simulating the behaviour of a human operator and the haptic controller. The outcome of this study are some previsions on different driving conditions, where an operator can drive manually or be assisted by the classic Direct haptic controller or by the novel Indirect controller. An experimental campaign with a driving simulator is performed, based on the previsions figured in the modeling study. The results of the experiment tells us that both the Direct and Indirect controllers can be helpful for performance and effort of the operator in low visibility conditions, while in normal visibility a contrast in goal can arise between operator and shared controller, due to a different way of the operator to cut curves. In a situation of evasive maneuver with a faulty controller, where the operator has to reject the force feedback, the Indirect controller is proved to be more damaging than the Direct support. Finally, some negative after-effects on performance and effort are encountered after the Indirect controller is switched-off, due to an intense adaptation of the operator to the different dynamics to control. The Indirect haptic support can be a valid alternative to the typical Direct control scheme for curve negotiation support, although there is room for improving its functioning. Future developments should be focused on making the Indirect controller easier to understand, to cope with more effectively in case of failures and possibly to switch to manual driving without confusion

    Measuring pilot control behavior in control tasks with haptic feedback

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    The research goal of this thesis was to increase the understanding of effects of haptic feedback on human’s performance and control behavior. Firstly, we investigated the effectiveness of haptic aids on improving human’s performance in different control scenarios. Beneficial effects of haptic aids were shown in terms of human's performances and control effort. Comparisons with input-mixing systems showed that, although input-mixing systems yielded better performance than haptic aids in nominal conditions, participants recovered better from failures of haptic systems than from failures of input-mixing aids. Secondly, we investigated how humans adapt their dynamic responses to realize benefits of the haptic feedback. To achieve this goal, we developed novel identification methods to estimate human's neuromuscular dynamics in a multi-loop control task. The novel methods assumed a time-invariant behavior of humans responses. The novel methods were validated in simulation and applied to experimental data. Finally, novel methods were developed to account for time-varying behavior of human's responses. Different sets of numerical simulations were used to validate the novel methods. Then, the methods were applied to data obtained in human in-the-loop experiments

    Aerial Vehicles

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    This book contains 35 chapters written by experts in developing techniques for making aerial vehicles more intelligent, more reliable, more flexible in use, and safer in operation.It will also serve as an inspiration for further improvement of the design and application of aeral vehicles. The advanced techniques and research described here may also be applicable to other high-tech areas such as robotics, avionics, vetronics, and space

    Motion feedback in the teleoperation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

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    Teleoperation of unmanned vehicles is a valuable tool in scenarios where the operator can not or should not operate the vehicle from on-board. Applications range from hazardous environments where exposure needs to be avoided, control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to retrieve overviews of inaccessible disaster areas, to deep sea exploration where on-board operation is simply not possible. However, limitations in sensor performance, noise and laten- cies introduced in the transmission, and ineffective display of the information to the operator can lead to a reduced amount of infor- mation, reduced performance, a loss of situation awareness, and in the worst case a loss of the remote vehicle. The spatial decoupling between the operator and the vehicle is one of the main challenges in teleoperation. Most setups include one or more control sticks to steer the ve- hicle, a monitor displaying the live video feed of the main vehicle camera, and a seat for the operator. This can be extended by display- ing additional state information using monitors or visual overlay, rendered on top of the main video stream [Tvaryanas, 2004; van Erp, 2000]. However, processing of multiple screens can increase mental workload. This can cause the operator to miss important information, leading to a loss of situation awareness and reduced performance or a crash of the vehicle. Instead of presenting information purely visually, other feedback modalities can be used to convey vehicle state or information about the task. The goal of this PhD thesis is to investigate the possibility of providing additional information using motion feedback. Here, motion feedback is defined as physically moving the operator using a motion simulator. In the work presented in this thesis a distinction between two motion feedback types is made. Vehicle-state motion feedback describes vehicle motion, while task-related motion feedback is the result of the combination of desired and actual vehicle motion. To investigate the effects of motion feedback in teleoperation several studies have been conducted. In the experiments presented participants either controlled a virtual quadrotor flying in a simu- lated environment or a real octorotor. Participants controlled the UAV from within the CyberMotion Simulator (CMS), an 8-DOF motion simulator located at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. The results show that providing motion feedback has a positive effect on performance in teleoperation of remote UAVs. If the remote vehicle is subject to external disturbances, e.g., wind gusts, vehicle- state feedback showed to improve disturbance rejection capabilities leading to increased performance. Furthermore, motion feedback can be shaped to include additional information about the task with positive effects on performance. This shows that the additional information included in the motion feedback can be used by the operator to improve performance and control behavior.Die Teleoperation eines unbemannten Gefährts ist ein wertvolles Werkzeug in Situationen, in denen der Pilot das Gefährt nicht von Bord aus steuern kann oder sollte. Beispiele hierfür reichen von, für den Piloten, toxischen Umgebungen, über Luftaufnahmen von Katastrophengebieten mithilfe von unbemannten Flugzeugen (engl. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(UAV)), bis zur Erforschung der Tiefsee, bei der die Steuerung von Bord schlichtweg unmöglich wird. Allerdings führen Einschränkungen in der Sensorerfassung, Rau- schen und Latenzen in der Übertragung, sowie eine ineffiziente Darstellung der Informationen für den Piloten dann zu einem redu- zierten Informationsfluss, reduzierter Leistung, einem Verlust des Situationsbewusstseins und im schlimmsten Fall zu einem Verlust des Gefährts. Die räumliche Entkopplung zwischen dem Piloten und des Flugobjekts ist eine der wichtigsten Herausforderungen in der Teleoperation von UAVs. Die meisten Kontrollstationen beinhalten ein oder mehrere Steu- erknüppel um das Gefährt zu steuern, einen Monitor der eine di- rekte Videoübertragung der Hauptkamera anzeigt und ein Sitzplatz für den Piloten. Dies kann erweitert werden, in dem zusätzliche Statusinformationen mit weiteren Monitoren oder visuellen Über- lagerungen, die über die Hauptübertragung gezeichnet werden, angezeigt werden [Tvaryanas, 2004; van Erp, 2000]. Jedoch kann die Verarbeitung mehrerer Bildschirme die mentale Belastung erhö- hen. Dies kann dazu führen, dass der Pilot wichtige Informationen nicht aufnimmt, was zu einem Verlust des Situationsbewusstseins und einhergehender reduzierten Leistung oder einem Unfall des Gefährts führt. Anstatt Information rein visuell zu präsentieren, können ande- re Modalitäten genutzt werden Rückmeldungen über den Status des Gefährts oder Informationen über die Aufgabe zu präsentieren. Das Ziel dieser Doktorarbeit ist die Untersuchung der Modalität der Bewegung. Es soll untersucht werden, ob Bewegungen genutzt werden können, um dem Piloten zusätzliche Rückmeldungen über den Zustand des Gefährts bereit zu stellen. Bewegungsfeedback beschreibt hier die physikalische Bewegung des Piloten mit Hilfe eines Bewegungssimulators. In dieser Arbeit wird zwischen zwei Typen von Bewegungsfeedback unterschieden. Fahrzeugzustandsbe- wegungsfeedback beschreibt die Bewegung des Fahrzeugs, während Aufgabenabhängiges Bewegungsfeedback die Kombination aus tatsächli- chem und gewünschtem Fahrzeugzustand ist. Die Effekte von Bewegungsfeedback in der Teleoperation wurden in mehreren Studien untersucht. In den vorgestellten Experimenten kontrollierten Teilnehmer entweder einen virtuellen Quadrotor, der in einer simulierten Umgebung flog, oder einen echten Octorotor. Die Teilnehmer steuerten das UAV von der Kanzel des CyberMotion Simulators (CMS) aus, ein 8-DOF Bewegungssimulator, der sich am Max-Planck-Institut für biologische Kybernetik befindet. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Bereitstellung von Bewegungs- feedback positive Effekte auf die Leistung und das Verhalten des Piloten in der Steuerung des UAVs hat. Ist das UAV externen Stö- rungen ausgesetzt, wie z.B. Windstößen, zeigte sich, dass Fahr- zeugzustandsbewegungsfeedback die Fähigkeit der Störungsunter- drückung des Piloten verbessert, was zu Leistungsteigerungen führt. Außerdem zeigte sich, dass Bewegungsfeedback dahingehend ge- formt werden kann, zusätzliche Informationen über die Aufgabe bereitzustellen. Dies zeigt, dass die zusätzlichen Informationen vom Piloten genutzt werden können um Leistung und Kontrollverhalten zu verbessern

    Reference Model for Interoperability of Autonomous Systems

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    This thesis proposes a reference model to describe the components of an Un-manned Air, Ground, Surface, or Underwater System (UxS), and the use of a single Interoperability Building Block to command, control, and get feedback from such vehicles. The importance and advantages of such a reference model, with a standard nomenclature and taxonomy, is shown. We overview the concepts of interoperability and some efforts to achieve common refer-ence models in other areas. We then present an overview of existing un-manned systems, their history, characteristics, classification, and missions. The concept of Interoperability Building Blocks (IBB) is introduced to describe standards, protocols, data models, and frameworks, and a large set of these are analyzed. A new and powerful reference model for UxS, named RAMP, is proposed, that describes the various components that a UxS may have. It is a hierarchical model with four levels, that describes the vehicle components, the datalink, and the ground segment. The reference model is validated by showing how it can be applied in various projects the author worked on. An example is given on how a single standard was capable of controlling a set of heterogeneous UAVs, USVs, and UGVs

    Operationalized Intent for Improving Coordination in Human-Agent Teams

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    With the increasing capabilities of artificial intelligent agents (AIAs) integrated into multi-agent systems, future concepts include human-agent teams (HATs) in which the members perform fluidly as a coordinated team. Research on coordination mechanisms in HATs is largely focused on AIAs providing information to humans to coordinate better (i.e. coordination from the AIA to the human). We focus on the compliment where AIAs can understand the operator to better synchronize with the operator (i.e. from the human to the AIA). This research focuses specifically on AIA estimation of operator intent. We established the Operationalized Intent framework which captures intent in a manner relevant to operators and AIAs. The core of operationalized intent is a quality goal hierarchy and an execution constraint list. Designing a quality goal hierarchy entails understanding the domain, the operators, and the AIAs. By extending established cognitive systems engineering analyses we developed a method to define the quality goals and capture the situations that influence their prioritization. Through a synthesis of mental model evaluation techniques, we defined and executed a process for designing human studies of intent. This human-in-the-loop study produced a corpus of data which was demonstrated the feasibility of estimating operationalized intent

    Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes

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    This bibliography lists 223 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in December, 1988
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