Real-time assessment of robot performance during remote exploration operations

Abstract—To ensure that robots are used effectively for exploration missions, it is important to assess their performance during operations. We are investigating the definition and computation of performance metrics for assessing remote robotic operations in real-time. Our approach is to monitor data streams from robots, compute performance metrics, and provide Web-based displays of these metrics for assessing robot performance during operations. We evaluated our approach for measuring robot performance with the K10 rovers from NASA Ames Research Center during a field test at Moses Lake Sand Dunes (WA) in June 2008. In this paper we present the results of evaluating our software for robot performance and discuss our conclusions from this evaluation for future robo

Enabling Technologies for Unmanned Protection Systems

Unmanned vehicles perform critical mission functions. Today, fielded unmanned vehicles have restricted operations as a single asset controlled by a single operator. In the future, however, it is envisioned that multiple unmanned air, ground, surface and underwater vehicles will be deployed in an integrated unmanned (and “manned”) team fashion in order to more effectively execute complex mission scenarios. To successfully facilitate this transition from single platforms to an integrated unmanned system concept, it is essential to first develop the required base technologies for multi-vehicle mission requirements, as well as test and evaluate such technologies in tightly controlled field experiments. Under such conditions, advances in unmanned technologies and associated system configurations can be empirically evaluated and quantitatively measured against relevant performance metrics. A series of field experiments will be conducted for unmanned force protection system applications. A basic teaming scenario is: Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) detect a target of interest on the ground; the UAVs cue unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) to the area; the UGVs provide on-ground evaluation and assessment; and the team of UAVs and UGVs execute the appropriate level of response. This paper details the scenarios and the technology enablers for experimentation using unmanned protection systems