Satellite Navigation for the Age of Autonomy

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) brought navigation to the masses. Coupled with smartphones, the blue dot in the palm of our hands has forever changed the way we interact with the world. Looking forward, cyber-physical systems such as self-driving cars and aerial mobility are pushing the limits of what localization technologies including GNSS can provide. This autonomous revolution requires a solution that supports safety-critical operation, centimeter positioning, and cyber-security for millions of users. To meet these demands, we propose a navigation service from Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) satellites which deliver precision in-part through faster motion, higher power signals for added robustness to interference, constellation autonomous integrity monitoring for integrity, and encryption / authentication for resistance to spoofing attacks. This paradigm is enabled by the 'New Space' movement, where highly capable satellites and components are now built on assembly lines and launch costs have decreased by more than tenfold. Such a ubiquitous positioning service enables a consistent and secure standard where trustworthy information can be validated and shared, extending the electronic horizon from sensor line of sight to an entire city. This enables the situational awareness needed for true safe operation to support autonomy at scale.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, 2020 IEEE/ION Position, Location and Navigation Symposium (PLANS

Post-Westgate SWAT : C4ISTAR Architectural Framework for Autonomous Network Integrated Multifaceted Warfighting Solutions Version 1.0 : A Peer-Reviewed Monograph

Police SWAT teams and Military Special Forces face mounting pressure and challenges from adversaries that can only be resolved by way of ever more sophisticated inputs into tactical operations. Lethal Autonomy provides constrained military/security forces with a viable option, but only if implementation has got proper empirically supported foundations. Autonomous weapon systems can be designed and developed to conduct ground, air and naval operations. This monograph offers some insights into the challenges of developing legal, reliable and ethical forms of autonomous weapons, that address the gap between Police or Law Enforcement and Military operations that is growing exponentially small. National adversaries are today in many instances hybrid threats, that manifest criminal and military traits, these often require deployment of hybrid-capability autonomous weapons imbued with the capability to taken on both Military and/or Security objectives. The Westgate Terrorist Attack of 21st September 2013 in the Westlands suburb of Nairobi, Kenya is a very clear manifestation of the hybrid combat scenario that required military response and police investigations against a fighting cell of the Somalia based globally networked Al Shabaab terrorist group.Comment: 52 pages, 6 Figures, over 40 references, reviewed by a reade

The Phoenix Drone: An Open-Source Dual-Rotor Tail-Sitter Platform for Research and Education

In this paper, we introduce the Phoenix drone: the first completely open-source tail-sitter micro aerial vehicle (MAV) platform. The vehicle has a highly versatile, dual-rotor design and is engineered to be low-cost and easily extensible/modifiable. Our open-source release includes all of the design documents, software resources, and simulation tools needed to build and fly a high-performance tail-sitter for research and educational purposes. The drone has been developed for precision flight with a high degree of control authority. Our design methodology included extensive testing and characterization of the aerodynamic properties of the vehicle. The platform incorporates many off-the-shelf components and 3D-printed parts, in order to keep the cost down. Nonetheless, the paper includes results from flight trials which demonstrate that the vehicle is capable of very stable hovering and accurate trajectory tracking. Our hope is that the open-source Phoenix reference design will be useful to both researchers and educators. In particular, the details in this paper and the available open-source materials should enable learners to gain an understanding of aerodynamics, flight control, state estimation, software design, and simulation, while experimenting with a unique aerial robot.Comment: In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA'19), Montreal, Canada, May 20-24, 201

Accessibility Design and Operational Considerations in the Development of Urban Aerial Mobility Vehicles and Networks

Urban aerial mobility vehicles and networks have recently gained considerable interest in the aviation community. These small, short-range vehicles with all-electric or hybrid-electric propulsion systems, tailored to metropolitan aerial transportation needs, promise to radically change passenger mobility and cargo distribution in cities. Accessibility issues have not been a major consideration in UAM vehicle and network discussions to date. This paper seeks to help change that

Beyond swarm intelligence: The Ultraswarm

This paper explores the idea that it may be possible to combine two ideas – UAV flocking, and wireless cluster computing – in a single system, the UltraSwarm. The possible advantages of such a system are considered, and solutions to some of the technical problems are identified. Initial work on constructing such a system based around miniature electric helicopters is described

Towards Communicating Agents and Avatars in Virtual Worlds

We report about ongoing research in a virtual reality environment where visitors can interact with agents that help them to obtain information, to perform certain transactions and to collaborate with them in order to get some tasks done. In addition, in a multi-user version of the system visitors can chat with each other. Our environment is a laboratory for research and for experiments with users interacting with agents in multimodal ways, referring to visualized information and making use of knowledge possessed by domain agents, but also by agents that represent other visitors of this environment. We discuss standards that are under development for designing such environments. Our environment models a local theatre in our hometown. We discuss our attempts to let this environment evolve into a theatre community where we do not only have goal-directed visitors buying tickets, but also visitors that that are not yet sure whether they want to buy or just want information or visitors who just want to look around, talk with others, etc. It is shown that we need a multi-user and multi-agent environment to realize our goals and that we need to have a unifying framework in order to be able to introduce and maintain different agents and user avatars with different abilities, including intellectual, interaction and animation abilities