MIRIAM: A Multimodal Chat-Based Interface for Autonomous Systems

We present MIRIAM (Multimodal Intelligent inteRactIon for Autonomous systeMs), a multimodal interface to support situation awareness of autonomous vehicles through chat-based interaction. The user is able to chat about the vehicle's plan, objectives, previous activities and mission progress. The system is mixed initiative in that it pro-actively sends messages about key events, such as fault warnings. We will demonstrate MIRIAM using SeeByte's SeeTrack command and control interface and Neptune autonomy simulator.Comment: 2 pages, ICMI'17, 19th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, November 13-17 2017, Glasgow, U

Autonomous vehicles in the response to maritime incidents

The future role of autonomous vehicles in the emergency response to maritime incidents isdiscussed and a framework for their integration into existing response plans is proposed. This is done inthe context of the developments on autonomous vehicle systems from the Underwater Systems andTechnologies Laboratory from Porto University

Mixed initiative planning and control of UAV teams for persistent surveillance

Tese de mestrado. Mestrado Integrado em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 201

Operator Objective Function Guidance for a Real-time Unmanned Vehicle Scheduling Algorithm

Advances in autonomy have made it possible to invert the typical operator-to-unmanned-vehicle ratio so that asingle operator can now control multiple heterogeneous unmanned vehicles. Algorithms used in unmanned-vehicle path planning and task allocation typically have an objective function that only takes into account variables initially identified by designers with set weightings. This can make the algorithm seemingly opaque to an operator and brittle under changing mission priorities. To address these issues, it is proposed that allowing operators to dynamically modify objective function weightings of an automated planner during a mission can have performance benefits. A multiple-unmanned-vehicle simulation test bed was modified so that operators could either choose one variable or choose any combination of equally weighted variables for the automated planner to use in evaluating mission plans. Results from a human-participant experiment showed that operators rated their performance and confidence highest when using the dynamic objective function with multiple objectives. Allowing operators to adjust multiple objectives resulted in enhanced situational awareness, increased spare mental capacity, fewer interventions to modify the objective function, and no significant differences in mission performance. Adding this form of flexibility and transparency to automation in future unmanned vehicle systems could improve performance, engender operator trust, and reduce errors.Aurora Flight Sciences, U.S. Office of Naval Researc

Water Take-off and Landing Hybrid Copter approach for Maritime CONOPs

With the rise in the use of multi-vehicles teams, for maritime operations, new challenges and opportunities arise regarding the complexity and logistics of these scenarios. One way to cope with said complexity is to imbue some of these systems with the versatility of operating in more than one physical medium (air/water/land) during its normal mission cycle, maximizing their possible mission roles. The ability of having a vehicle which can operate both in the air and on the water can further expand and facilitate maritime operations by allowing new sampling, deployment and even communication scenarios. This work follows the iterations of a specific vehicle concept, through its various phases, and tracks the developments and challenges necessary to adapt a Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) to become capable of water take-off & landing, and explores its applicability as a viable operational mobile communication gateway for underwater and surface assets

Automation and robotics for the Space Exploration Initiative: Results from Project Outreach

A total of 52 submissions were received in the Automation and Robotics (A&R) area during Project Outreach. About half of the submissions (24) contained concepts that were judged to have high utility for the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) and were analyzed further by the robotics panel. These 24 submissions are analyzed here. Three types of robots were proposed in the high scoring submissions: structured task robots (STRs), teleoperated robots (TORs), and surface exploration robots. Several advanced TOR control interface technologies were proposed in the submissions. Many A&R concepts or potential standards were presented or alluded to by the submitters, but few specific technologies or systems were suggested