Reference Model for Interoperability of Autonomous Systems

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

The case of Guarda Nacional Republicana

It is known that the quickness and effectiveness of Search and Rescue (SAR) missions are crucial to their success. This study has the purpose of understanding how the application of an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) in SAR missions, could bring improved outcomes and be an added value to the procedures that are already performed by SAR teams. In this study, the results were obtained by performing a series of field trials, based on the recreation of real SAR scenarios and the implementation of an operational plan proposal, with recordings of time lapses at different phases of the operation. The reports of the real scenarios were provided by the teams of the Grupo de Intervenção, Proteção e Socorro (GIPS), who are under the command of the Unidade de Intervenção (UI), specialized in this type of missions. Both GIPS and UI are dependent on Tenente General Comandante Geral of the Guarda Nacional Republicana (GNR). A survey developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was also applied at the end of each trial in order to evaluate the workload index of the participants in the trials. Throughout this research, conclusions are obtained taking into account the difference of an UAS operation between day and night periods, the improvements to the current procedures, but also the limitations of this system, such as the measures that should be taken when this system is applied in SAR missions. Conclusions were also based on the replies to the surveys. The focus of this case study was the use of an UAS in SAR missions performed in a mountain environment, well known by its adverse weather conditions. This study proved that, under these kinds of conditions, the use of the UAS was not always possible due to their own limitations and the validation of the proposed operational plan was obtained.Sabe-se que a rapidez e eficácia na realização de missões de busca e salvamento, são fatores cruciais para assegurar o seu sucesso. Um dos principais objetivos deste estudo é perceber se, a aplicação de um Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS), neste tipo de missões, pode ou não acarretar evoluções e por sua vez melhorias aos procedimentos já anteriormente realizados pelas equipas de busca e salvamento. Os resultados deste estudo foram alcançados através da realização de ensaios no terreno, tendo como base a recriação de cenários reais de busca e salvamento que tivessem já ocorrido. Através da implementação de uma proposta de plano operacional, foram também retirados diversos tempos de desempenho em diferentes fases da operação. Os relatórios dos cenários reais foram disponibilizados pelas equipas do Grupo de Intervenção, Proteção e Socorro (GIPS) que, estão sob o comando da Unidade de Intervenção (UI) especializadas neste tipo de missões. Tanto o GIPS como a UI estão dependentes do Tenente General Comandante Geral da Guarda Nacional Republicana (GNR). Foi também aplicado um inquérito desenvolvido pela National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) para avaliar o índice de carga de trabalho dos participantes no final de cada um dos ensaios. Ao longo desta pesquisa, foram tiradas conclusões sobre a diferença na operação de um UAS entre o período diurno e noturno, as melhorias sentidas nos procedimentos usados atualmente, assim como as suas limitações e medidas que devem ser tomadas quando aplicado em missões de busca e salvamento. Também são retiradas conclusões a partir das respostas obtidas ao inquérito. Este caso de estudo tem, como foco, as missões de busca e salvamento realizadas em ambiente montanhoso bem conhecido pelas suas condições climatéricas adversas. Foi também verificado que na presença destas condições a aplicação de um UAS nem sempre é possível, devido as limitações próprias do equipamento e obteve-se a validação do plano operacional proposto

Standardization Roadmap for Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Version 1.0

This Standardization Roadmap for Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Version 1.0 (“roadmap”) represents the culmination of the UASSC’s work to identify existing standards and standards in development, assess gaps, and make recommendations for priority areas where there is a perceived need for additional standardization and/or pre-standardization R&D. The roadmap has examined 64 issue areas, identified a total of 60 gaps and corresponding recommendations across the topical areas of airworthiness; flight operations (both general concerns and application-specific ones including critical infrastructure inspections, commercial services, and public safety operations); and personnel training, qualifications, and certification. Of that total, 40 gaps/recommendations have been identified as high priority, 17 as medium priority, and 3 as low priority. A “gap” means no published standard or specification exists that covers the particular issue in question. In 36 cases, additional R&D is needed. The hope is that the roadmap will be broadly adopted by the standards community and that it will facilitate a more coherent and coordinated approach to the future development of standards for UAS. To that end, it is envisioned that the roadmap will be widely promoted and discussed over the course of the coming year, to assess progress on its implementation and to identify emerging issues that require further elaboration

Robot-assisted measurement for hydrologic understanding in data sparse regions

This article describes the field application of small, low-cost robots for remote surface data collection and an automated workflow to support water balance computations and hydrologic understanding where water availability data is sparse. Current elevation measurement approaches, such as manual surveying and LiDAR, are costly and infrequent, leading to potential inefficiencies for quantifying the dynamic hydrologic storage capacity of the land surface over large areas. Experiments to evaluate a team of two different robots, including an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and an unmanned surface vehicle (USV), to collect hydrologic surface data utilizing sonar and visual sensors were conducted at three different field sites within the Arkavathy Basin river network located near Bangalore in Karnataka, South India. Visual sensors were used on the UAV to capture high resolution imagery for topographic characterization, and sonar sensors were deployed on the USV to capture bathymetric readings; the data streams were fused in an automated workflow to determine the storage capacity of agricultural reservoirs (also known as “tanks”) at the three field sites. This study suggests: (i) this robot-assisted methodology is low-cost and suitable for novice users, and (ii) storage capacity data collected at previously unmapped locations revealed strong power-type relationships between surface area, stage, and storage volume, which can be incorporated into modeling of landscape-scale hydrology. This methodology is of importance to water researchers and practitioners because it produces local, high-resolution representations of bathymetry and topography and enables water balance computations at small-watershed scales, which offer insight into the present-day dynamics of a strongly human impacted watershed

Drones for Disaster Response and Relief Operations

Aerial drones are one of the most promising and powerful new technologies to improve disaster response and relief operations. Drones naturally complement traditional manned relief operations by helping to ensure that operations can be conducted safer, faster, and more efficiently. When a disaster occurs, drones may be used to provide relief workers with better situational awareness, locate survivors amidst the rubble, perform structural analysis of damaged infrastructure, deliver needed supplies and equipment, evacuate casualties, and help extinguish fires -- among many other potential applications. This report will discuss how drones and the aerial data they collect can be used before, during, and after a disaster. It includes an overview of potential solutions and deployment models, as well as, recommendations on removing regulatory barriers to their use. The American Red Cross, leading private sector companies, and federal agencies coordinated by Measure, a 32 Advisors Company, have come together to explore and explain how and why drones should be used in the wake of natural disasters and other emergencies that threaten widespread loss of life and property

A systems approach to Vertical Take-off Unmanned Aerial Vehicle design for interoperability

The capabilities of ‘Unmanned Systems’ (USs) are presently at various stages of technological development and in-service trials. The induction of USs in future ‘Network-Centric Warfare’ (NCW) requires interoperability, the ability of multiple systems to exchange information, to be addressed for enhanced mission effectiveness. To provide effective in-service induction with low life-cycle costs of operation and support, interoperability is to be addressed in the conceptual design process. The focus of this research is on the conceptual design of ‘Vertical Take-off Unmanned Aerial Vehicles’ (VTUAVs). The traditional helicopter design methodology was re-visited to encompass interoperability design requirements in the conceptual phase. The research covers the following: (a) Holistic investigation of interoperability issues governing VTUAV operations; (b) System hierarchy development for identification of the mission payload and vehicle components of an interoperable VTUAV; (c) Interoperable architecture development from a ‘Network Centric Operations’ (NCO) perspective; and (d) Verification of the interoperable VTUAV design methodology through a conceptual design exercise – case study on Counter- ‘Improvised Explosive Devices’ (IEDs) operations by VTUAV and UGV. The research updated the interoperable VTUAV design methodology and provided the following key contributions: (a) Identification of pre-emptive and situational mission requirements to maximise mission effectiveness for a stipulated operational need and environment; (b) Mission systems hierarchy and structure for identification of an enhanced mission payload through synergistic integration of on-board and off-board systems; (c) Interoperability architecture that complies with NATO interoperability standards; and (d) Vehicle system hierarchy and structure for design of vehicle components to meet design constraints and the stipulated mission requirements for optimising interoperability. The methodology developed for interoperable VTUAV design provides the avenue to achieve an optimal interoperable conceptual design – critical for integration of systems for NCW and total system effectiveness

U.S. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVS) and Network Centric Warfare (NCW) impacts on combat aviation tactics from Gulf War I through 2007 Iraq

Unmanned, aerial vehicles (UAVs) are an increasingly important element of many modern militaries. Their success on battlefields in Afghanistan, Iraq, and around the globe has driven demand for a variety of types of unmanned vehicles. Their proven value consists in low risk and low cost, and their capabilities include persistent surveillance, tactical and combat reconnaissance, resilience, and dynamic re-tasking. This research evaluates past, current, and possible future operating environments for several UAV platforms to survey the changing dynamics of combat-aviation tactics and make recommendations regarding UAV employment scenarios to the Turkish military. While UAVs have already established their importance in military operations, ongoing evaluations of UAV operating environments, capabilities, technologies, concepts, and organizational issues inform the development of future systems. To what extent will UAV capabilities increasingly define tomorrow's missions, requirements, and results in surveillance and combat tactics? Integrating UAVs and concepts of operations (CONOPS) on future battlefields is an emergent science. Managing a transition from manned- to unmanned and remotely piloted aviation platforms involves new technological complexity and new aviation personnel roles, especially for combat pilots. Managing a UAV military transformation involves cultural change, which can be measured in decades.http://archive.org/details/usunmannedaerial109454211Turkish Air Force authors.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Standardization Roadmap for Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Version 2.0

This Standardization Roadmap for Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Version 2.0 (“roadmap”) is an update to version 1.0 of this document published in December 2018. It identifies existing standards and standards in development, assesses gaps, and makes recommendations for priority areas where there is a perceived need for additional standardization and/or pre-standardization R&D. The roadmap has examined 78 issue areas, identified a total of 71 open gaps and corresponding recommendations across the topical areas of airworthiness; flight operations (both general concerns and application-specific ones including critical infrastructure inspections, commercial services, and public safety operations); and personnel training, qualifications, and certification. Of that total, 47 gaps/recommendations have been identified as high priority, 21 as medium priority, and 3 as low priority. A “gap” means no published standard or specification exists that covers the particular issue in question. In 53 cases, additional R&D is needed. As with the earlier version of this document, the hope is that the roadmap will be broadly adopted by the standards community and that it will facilitate a more coherent and coordinated approach to the future development of standards for UAS. To that end, it is envisioned that the roadmap will continue to be promoted in the coming year. It is also envisioned that a mechanism may be established to assess progress on its implementation

Design in Engineering: An Evaluation of Civilian and Military Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Platforms, Considering Smart Sensing with Ethical Design to Embody Mitigation Against Asymmetric Hostile Actor Exploitation

This report is written in part-fulfilment of personal output criteria for the Visiting Research Fellowship (Sir Richard Grenville Fellowship) at the Changing Character of War Centre, Pembroke College, Oxford, and the Centre for Sea Power and Strategy, Britannia Royal Naval College, Plymouth University at BRNC, Dartmouth. In this report I undertook an extensive analysis of the maritime UAV platform systems sector of a wide range of upstream manufacturing industry and downstream end user stakeholders. I consulted a global range of military and civilian users, to inform discussions around civilian UAV platforms which could be modified by hostile non-state actors, with emphasis on the littoral maritime region. This has strategic relevance to the United Kingdom, being an island-state with over 10,000 miles of coastline, c. 600 ports, and nearly 300 off-shore oil and gas platforms. In addition the UK has 14 dependencies together with a combined EEZ of 2.5 million square miles, the fifth largest in the world

Advances in Human Robot Interaction for Cloud Robotics applications

In this thesis are analyzed different and innovative techniques for Human Robot Interaction. The focus of this thesis is on the interaction with flying robots. The first part is a preliminary description of the state of the art interactions techniques. Then the first project is Fly4SmartCity, where it is analyzed the interaction between humans (the citizen and the operator) and drones mediated by a cloud robotics platform. Then there is an application of the sliding autonomy paradigm and the analysis of different degrees of autonomy supported by a cloud robotics platform. The last part is dedicated to the most innovative technique for human-drone interaction in the User’s Flying Organizer project (UFO project). This project wants to develop a flying robot able to project information into the environment exploiting concepts of Spatial Augmented Realit